


Effect On Landing Minima of Temporarily Failed Or Downgraded Equipment

by ShippenStand



Series: Low Visibility Operations [2]
Category: Stargate Atlantis
Genre: Alternate Universe, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Canon-Typical Violence, DADT, Episode Related, Geek Cameron Mitchell, M/M, Physical Disability
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-11-27
Updated: 2018-11-28
Packaged: 2019-08-30 02:25:03
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 13
Words: 32,078
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16756090
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ShippenStand/pseuds/ShippenStand
Summary: "Yeah, but the really freaky thing is that the readings indicate that it's forty-five thousand yearsin the futureold. And the MALP radioed with Rodney's voice."(This story is set about 18 months after Separation and Clearance Rules for Instrument Flight. Some details will make more sense if you read that first, but all you really need to know is that this Cam Mitchell didn't make it off the ice unscathed. To stay with the Stargate Program, he followed his other interest and earned a PhD in computer science, assigned to Atlantis for his expertise in Ancient systems. John and Cam have a friends-with-benefits arrangement. Sheppard is still very Sheppard.)





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

  * For [neevebrody](https://archiveofourown.org/users/neevebrody/gifts).
  * Inspired by [Blank Slate](https://archiveofourown.org/works/16574393) by [neevebrody](https://archiveofourown.org/users/neevebrody/pseuds/neevebrody). 



> With much respect to Neeve Brody for the inspiration.  
> Also thanks to tesserae for finding the first big problem.  
> Many thanks to hilarytamar for findng the second big problem, and then a lot of other ones. Your lighting beta was superb. All remaining problems are mine.

"So many things we could have done with three ZPMs," Rodney heard Radek mutter.

Rodney growled at Radek over his laptop screen. "But we have one full one," he said, parroting Woosley. Earth nabbing two of the three they'd rescued from that Ancient facility still rankled.

Radek pushed his glasses up his nose as he looked up and leaned back in the chair opposite. "But even if we had three right now, all we know how to do with three is to fly the city. This has been a quiet week, and I have enjoyed the frustration of trying to find things in this Ancient database. We found the city's manufacturing capabilities last year, but no way to operate them."

Rodney leaned back, too. "And we haven't found any instructional files in almost five years."

Radek leaned forward, as if to keep the distance between them constant. "I think the city may have hidden them. There are many places in this database we have not yet explored. And the more I look at the mess of the files the Ancients left behind, the more I think it was damaged on purpose. What if the Ancients didn't want anyone to be able to create more drones, or control crystals and hid all of the files?"

Rodney was skeptical, but he couldn't discount Radek out of hand. The Ancients had made things in the facilities they'd found, and the data they'd downloaded from that space-folding place indicated that charging ZedPMs had only been a side project to their fundamental research. At least the database from that facility had been straightforward, if focused on advanced physics. Finding anything practical in the Atlantis database was a matter of luck and ingenuity. "Your spare time then," Rodney said. "Side project. Can we get back to this subspace theory Voorst put in. It may not be totally stupid."

Rodney's earpiece crackled on the command frequency. "Rodney, where are you?"

Rodney tapped his earpiece. "Lab. Busy. Is there a problem?" He brought up a monitoring screen on his laptop. "Oh, unscheduled off world activation. Who is it?"

"Apparently it's you. Or at least it could have been you. Did you ever lose your IDC?"

"No!" Rodney had a flash of panic, but he knew he'd never lost his IDC. "What are you talking about?" He glared at Radek, covered his mic and hissed, "You had to say _quiet week_ , didn't you?"

Radek rolled his eyes and snorted.

"We're receiving an older IDC code of yours." 

"How old?"

"About two and a half years."

Rodney heard Chuck's voice through Sheppard's radio. "Is anyone receiving?" John must be standing right next to him. Rodney rose from his chair, planning to go to the gate room and tapping the commands to add the general channel so he could listen in.

"Yes," came a voice. It sounded familiar.

"Identification, please?" Chuck's voice was flat.

"Atlantis? It's.. ah... Dr. Rodney McKay," the voice said, a bit thin and mechanical, almost questioning.

Rodney fell back in his seat, dread in his gut. Oh, this was not good.

"Where are you?" he heard Sheppard ask.

"Colonel Sheppard! You made it back. Good to know."

"Back from where?" Sheppard said, drawing out each word.

"Back from the future," came the voice, and it sounded so much like Rodney remembered recordings of his own voice, only rougher, weaker. "Oh. Maybe I didn't calculate it right," the voice went on. "Small variations when you're moving forty-eight thousand years. Maybe you haven't left yet. That would be awkward."

"Forty-eight thousand years?" Sheppard asked. "And where are you?" Rodney bit back adding a _Who are you?_

"I'm at the Alpha site, but it isn't where it used to be. I can't detect anyone here."

If the IDC was two and a half years old, they'd moved the Alpha site twice since then, Rodney thought. And how the hell was his voice on the radio? He _hated_ the implications of time travel. 

John's voice in his ear said, "We have radio contact. Rodney, it sounds like you. Could it be the duplicates again? Replicators?" 

Rodney shook his head, even though John couldn't see it. "I heard. I've been monitoring, and no, not unless it's a new set. I don't think the replicator us would have survived."

"Get up here," Sheppard said, sounding clipped.

Rodney stood up again, swallowed, and turned the laptop to face Radek, who did not have his radio on and was looking at him with puzzlement.

Rodney took a breath. "Short version: there's a version of me that dialed in with an old IDC and said something about traveling forty-eight thousand years. We know wormholes can move across dimensions and time under the right circumstances. Analyze this incoming wormhole for any anomalies that would suggest a problem." Rodney turned to leave without waiting for a response, calling, "And put your radio on," over his shoulder as he ran out of the lab. He could hear Sheppard and the flat, almost mechanical version of his own voice as he hurried for the transporter.

"Who else is with you?" Sheppard asked. 

"What happened? Where is everyone?"

"Give us your gate address and we'll come to you."

"The Alpha site," the voice said. "PX5-226." Rodney shook his head. That had never been an alpha site.

"How did you end up there alone?" Sheppard asked. The transporter doors slid open and Rodney took off at a run.

"It's a long story."

"I've got time," John said as Rodney skidded into the atrium and moved over to the console. Chuck gave way with the grace of long practice in being bumped out of the way. Rodney took a breath and brought up the voice recognition program he'd put in for times when a team didn't have an IDC. He set it to find a match.

The voice didn't answer, and Rodney gestured in the air in a _keep talking_ motion. The motion caught Sheppard's attention, and he glanced at Rodney and Chuck. Sheppard said, "I don't know how to tell you this, but there's another you sitting in the gate room with me."

There was a long pause, and the voice said, "What year is it?"

Rodney looked at Sheppard, then followed his gaze up to see Woolsey looking out from the balcony, listening. "Answer!" he snapped at Sheppard. "Keep it talking. I need more data for voice analysis."

"Seriously," said the voice "what year is it?"

Sheppard said, "What year do you think it is?"

"I was shooting for the Twenty third of January, two thousand and nine."

Rodney thought there was some sarcasm in the voice.

"Well, that's a bit of a problem, then," Sheppard said. "It's November eighth, two thousand and nine."

"Huh," the voice said. "Right year. Good."

Sheppard waited to see what he would add, but the silence stretched and Rodney glared, making a talking motion with his left hand. Sheppard rolled his eyes and said, "What year did you come from?" 

"No relevant calendar," The voice sounded uncertain. "Forty-seven thousand six hundred years, nine moths, twenty one days. I went through before you did. But you clearly did it." 

"I did?" Sheppard said. "I did what?" 

"Went back!" 

"I never went into the future," Sheppard said. 

"Oh." There was a pause. "Lower the shield? Please? I have a bit of a clock here." There was another pause. "Did Colonel Sumner get killed in your time line?"

"Yes. Why do you ask?"

"Just trying to establish relative parameters. I think I jumped universes. He did in ours, too. What about Michael?"

"Michael who?" Sheppard asked

"You know, Carson's virus to take out the Iratus parts of the wraith. The first subject where it worked. Michael. Reverted, kidnapped Teyla, tried to take over the galaxy."

"Elizabeth vetoed that idea. I agreed." Rodney glanced up and scrunched his face in horror. No, that had not been a good idea and from the sounds of it, it hadn't gone well. Sheppard said, "So did you."

"So you don't have a Michael problem. Huh." 

"Sounds like we made the right call then." 

"So it would seem," the voice said. "And you never went to the future, so I can only hope my Colonel Sheppard made it to the right past." There was a long silence from the voice, and Rodney stared at the screen, which had started to process. Finally, enough voice data! Rodney waved at Sheppard to get his attention and pointed at the result that appeared in front of him. "Voice print analysis is close to mine, but not quite. I think the voice is synthetic."

"So if we go there, it's probably a trap of some kind."

"We need to send a MALP," Rodney said, "but we need to disconnect the gate and dial back."

Sheppard gave a tight nod. On the radio he said, "Can you shut down the gate from your end?"

"Slight problem with that," the voice said, sounding weaker. "I'm..." the voice faded out.

"Hello?" Sheppard said, "Come back." But nothing answered. He turned to Rodney and Chuck. "How long until automatic disconnection.

Chuck had the answer. "Twenty-seven more minutes before the thirty-eight minute window closes."

With the quiet on the radio link, Rodney finally had time to think, the dread that had first gripped him giving way to curiosity. "If it's me, even replicator me, we could have two McKays," Rodney said. "I really did enjoy working with my double." He said it mostly to irritate Sheppard, and to give himself something to say. 

"And he's back from the future," Sheppard said, smirking.

"Got I hate that movie," Rodney said reflexively.

Sheppard said, "Then we know it's not you. It made the reference twice." 

Rodney rolled his eyes and turned back to the console, looking at the readouts. "The voice was probably synthesized."

"I say we send a MALP through to the coordinates he gave us, and take it from there. Someone knows where we are." Rodney glanced up. That hadn't occurred to him to worry about. Sheppard said, "And if it isn't you, we need to find out how badly our security's been compromised."

"Agreed," said Woolsey from the balcony. Rodney glanced up. He was sharing a glance with Sheppard, both with grim looks on their faces.

"I'll prep a MALP," Rodney said, rising from the console. He radioed Radek as he walked. "Anything on that gate transmission?"

"Everything looks normal. What is going on, Rodney?"

\--*--

 

Cam sat on Sheppard's small couch, love seat, really, Beulah parked in the far corner and the crutches he needed to get across the room leaning in the small space between the couch and the wall. When he'd first come to Atlantis, John's couch had been against the wall. The small gap had opened up a month or two after they started the friends-with-benefits thing, with no comment, after John's foot had knocked Cam's crutches from where they'd been leaning against the wall. And then Sheppard, preoccupied by the spectacular blow job he was giving Cam, had kneeled on the shaft of the crutch in the dark, bending the frame and bruising his knee. Hence, the space specifically for Cam's crutches. It was the kind of thing he really liked about Sheppard--attention to detail and no need for discussion, especially in accommodating any of Cam's limitations.

Cam still wasn't sure what to call their relationship, but it had certainly gone well beyond their furtive meetings back at Maxwell. Back then Cam could never have imagined Sheppard in his sweats, hair slick from the shower, sitting sideways on the love seat and putting his feet in Cam's lap. Cam placed a hand on John's surprisingly skinny ankles and John didn't even twitch under the caress. "So, what happened when you sent the MALP through?"

"The only thing it showed besides grass and trees and breathable air was another MALP. A really old MALP."

"What, from the beginning of the expedition?" Sheppard shook his head and sipped his beer. "So how old?"

"Something like forty-five to fifty thousand years."

" _What?_ " Cam shook his head. "Wow."

"Yeah, but the really freaky thing is that the readings indicate that it's forty-five thousand years _in the future_ old. And the MALP radioed with Rodney's voice."

"I guess time travel isn't that precise," Cam said, trying to wrap his head around it. "SG1 had a time travel thing that happened," Cam said. "They found a ship like a puddle jumper that could do it." Sheppard shrugged, clearly unsettled. Then something hit Cam. "You said it had Rodney's voice?"

"Synthetic voice probably when it radioed in, but it didn't talk when the MALP was there. Power was dead. And we have no idea how it did the voice or dialed in, either. Our MALP couldn't pick up much besides materials testing."

"Hmm. Hot MALP on MALP action," Cam said, the innuendo coming out unbidden as he thought about what this meant. Cam's interest was piqued. MALPs were computationally stupid, so anyone hacking one to send voice over the radio and operate a DHD was interesting. "I wonder how it was programmed."

Sheppard moved his foot to shove against Cam's thigh. "You're such a geek."

"You aren't curious?"

"Of course I am, but I'm not bringing it back to Atlantis."

"Security risk," Cam nodded. He sipped his beer, but he couldn't help thinking about the processors in a MALP and the primitive robotics. "I don't supposed I could..." He stopped himself. He didn't want to take advantage of whatever this relationship with Sheppard was, but when he looked over, Sheppard had a smirk on his face.

"Was already going to ask about your dance card for tomorrow?"

Cam couldn't suppress the smile. He loved away missions. "I think I can clear it."


	2. Chapter 2

Cam rolled onto the gate room floor from the transporter, Beulah swapped for the McKay2000, the chair tricked out for off-world work. His Beretta was strapped to his calf, a P90 in a custom holster on the right side, and a laptop in another hard-sided holster on the left. The sling for his crutches over the back was the same as on Beulah, McKay admitting that he couldn't improve on Cam's design. A small tool kit was held under the seat with velcro. He loved this chair, and he let his heels bounce on the footrests. Going off world never got old, even if most of the time he was there for his geek skills. Things could and did happen, even on what were supposed to be milk runs. In this case, they had a mystery.

McKay strolled up next to him, trying to act casual. "So, if you find I lived forty-five thousand years from now, you'll let me know, right?"

"Sure thing, McKay. Sure you don't want to come with?"

"Too many things to do. More important things." McKay was a crap liar. Sheppard wouldn't let him go. "The external hardware didn't seem changed. It was in remarkably good shape for its age."

"And you're kind of spooked that it used your voice," Cam said. "I would be."

At that admission, McKay's stiffness relaxed a bit. "Maybe I programmed it?"

"Would you recognize your own work?"

"Probably," McKay said, then cocked his head for a minute. He took a pen out of his pocket and grabbed Cam's hand. "Probably, yes. Look for this," he said, inking numbers on to Cam's skin, pressing a bit too hard as he filled in the space from his knuckles to his wrist. "If you find all or part of this, it's me."

Cam looked at the writing. 1, 5, 12, 22, 35, 51, 70, 92, 117, 145, 176. "The pentagonal number series. Could have just said that." He shook out his hand to ease the slight pain left behind by the pen point.

McKay blushed slightly. "It was the first thing that really made math beautiful. I find a way to work it in, if I can. If you find it in the code, it's my work," he said, and then the words started tumbling out so that Cam could barely follow. "But if I was really clever, I buried all evidence. I don't know why I would hide it, unless it wasn't me and it isn't there." And that thought made McKay spook again. "I'm not sure which is worse, having myself in a forty-five thousand-year, back-to-the-future MALP, or someone wanting me to think I'm in a forty-five thousand-year-old time-traveling MALP." His lips twisted for a moment and then, "Keep me posted," he said stiffly, and went up the stairs, pausing to talk with Sheppard for a moment. 

Sheppard nodded at whatever McKay said and came down the stairs to join Cam. Like McKay, he wasn't geared up. Cam was going out with AR2, lead by Major Lorne. "You ready?" At Cam's nod he turned away to look at the rest of the team. "You know the drill," he said, giving his usual parting words. "Don't do anything I wouldn't do."

Lorne gave the usual answer. "Leaves a lot of latitude, sir."

"Don't lose Dr. Mitchell. McKay would complain."

Cam warmed at the words. Sheppard always said that, too, if Cam was on a mission without him. He wondered if anyone noticed he didn't say it about Radek or any other members of the science staff. He glanced up to find Lorne glancing at him with a small smile, a bare curve of one side of his mouth. Guess they'd noticed. The rest of the team of Marines was looking at Sheppard, wearing their game faces. Parrish was on the trip, too, to take the opportunity to check out the plants on a new planet. Cam didn't have much in common with the folks from Botany, but he knew him from his outings with Lorne's team and rolled over to say hello as the dialing sequence started. 

"Let me know if you need a hand when we get there," Parrish said. "I mean, with the ground." He glanced at Cam's chair.

Cam didn't roll his eyes, but he patted the flywheel that ran outside the mountain bike-style wheels. "With this chair? You'd be surprised what McKay can come up with." The chair was amazing, and McKay had engineered a torque converter with a continuously variable transmission, forward and reverse gears or freerunning. He could roll the damn thing up hill by himself. Slowly, maybe, but he could do it.

Parrish smiled shyly, a bit embarrassed, and Cam knew he meant well, but he should know better. Then it was time to go through the gate. Cam emerged in a blast of heat and a slight, swampy smell of decaying vegetation, perspiration already pricking on his upper lip as he rolled down the ramp. At least this one had a ramp and not stairs.

The old MALP was close to the DHD, angled as if it had rolled out of the gate at an angle and come to rest. The MALP they'd sent through was right next to it, and Ayala from Lorne's team was already moving it out of the way. Cam moved over to older one and rolled around it, able to move around three of the sides, the fourth blocked by how close it was to the DHD. It looked old, although he wouldn't have been able to peg it at forty-odd thousand years. There wasn't much rust on the chassis, but some of the screws and bolts were corroded to the point where you couldn't tell what they had originally been. Cam stood to look at the top. It mostly had the same patina of age except for one thing that didn't seem right. Screw marks. He sat down again and snagged his toolkit from under the chair. Next thing was to take off that panel and get to the MALP's brain. He stood and braced himself on the MALP to get at the access panel. Someone else had been in it, a lot more recently than forty-odd thousand years. The screws were in much better shape, newer and with clear indentations for a hex driver. They came out fairly easily.

He hooked the laptop cables in and sat back down, wiping the sweat off his face as he booted up his machine and tried to get into the MALP's brain. Nothing. He'd done this dozens of times on Atlantis, and he could tell that the failure wasn't likely on his end. "Power's dead. That phone home thing must have been its last hurrah." Cam put his laptop on the MALP and rolled away to try to find a breeze while Lorne radioed back to Atlantis that they needed a power source. Cam drank water while they waited, feeling like it was August on the Carolina coast after a big rain. In the short time they'd been there he could feel sweat soaking his clothes and into the seat of the chair.

When the new MALP battery came through, they hooked it up carefully. "Don't want this thing activated while I'm working on it," Cam said. Given the thing's behavior, best to keep it dormant. He used enough of a trickle charge just to the brain, allowing him to get into the file structure and start digging. It was hidden, mostly in the _security through obscurity_ way, but there was a subdirectory he'd never seen in other MALP systems, and the size was bigger than all of a normal MALP's memory, much bigger than the hard drive he had on the laptop. It was named 15122235517092, McKay's signature, plain as day. So much for whoever had done this wanting to hide anything. It was probably McKay, but how? "Well, damn," he said.

Lorne looked over. "Good damn or bad damn."

"Not sure yet." Cam opened up the subdirectory, and damn if there wasn't a file titled README.TXT. He copied to his laptop and said, "Let's get out of this swamp."

Lorne, looking like it was only officer training that kept him from wilting in the heat, said, "Gladly."

\--*-- 

"So wait," Woolsey said. "The Read Me file was written by Colonel Sheppard?"

Cam saw Sheppard stifle a squirm at the thought. "It's a brief after action report," Cam said. "It's signed by John Sheppard, lieutenant colonel of the US Air Force, and it's kind of his style, too, down to having the obscure Star Wars reference he works into every AAR." 

Sheppard raised his eyebrows in challenge. "Got to make it fun somehow," he drawled, but Cam could tell he was as weirded out as McKay.

McKay was looking at a box he'd brought in, frowning, and said, "Did it occur to you to try to radio him?"

Lorne looked confused, "Radio who?"

"The me in the MALP!" Rodney threw his hands up in frustration. "That was how it communicated through the wormhole! You were right there and could have, I don't know, asked it how it got there? How it managed to dial the gate?"

Cam said, "It was out of juice. We kept it dormant, just enough power to read the files."

"Rodney," Sheppard said, extending the first syllable as McKay took a breath to yell.

McKay closed his mouth, then said more calmly, "If that AAR is right, you were with it forty-eight thousand years from now in some alternate future."

"But that never happened." Sheppard's lips twisted slightly. Cam figured it was probably only the shred of Officer's Decorum that kept him from running his hand down his face. "We have problems with the Genii, which don't make our life easy, but it sounds like this Michael of theirs is even worse."

"All the more reason it was good Carson's hare-brained idea was shot down!" McKay worked himself up to near yelling again. Then he took a breath, apparently to calm himself, and went back to fiddling with the box, his mouth slanted hard.

"So," Sheppard said, "could you not leave your new toy in the lab, or does it have something to do with the meeting?"

McKay glanced over at Cam. "It's a hard drive big enough to copy whatever is in the MALP so we can look at it on an isolated system. But I'm not sure we should bring it into the city."

"Agreed," Sheppard said quickly.

"We need to get it off that planet before it rusts in place," Cam said. "Can we move it to the Alpha site?"

Sheppard and Woolsey shared a glance. "Agreed," Woolsey said. "Now, about what you found. The AAR says that the Dr. McKay from that time line created a hologram to give that timeline's Sheppard instructions for how to survive and return to his past." Woolsey blinked and muttered, "And that's a sentence I never thought I'd say."

Cam cleared his throat. "I'd like permission to gate back to the planet and copy those files off the MALP. I can analyze them here on a completely isolated system. If they were written by McKay--any McKay--there will be something to learn." 

Cam felt Sheppard's eyes on him, but he looked over at McKay, who looked up with that slight expression of pleased suspicion he got whenever anyone complimented him. "Well, of course," he said, his voice a mix of arrogance and surprise. Cam glanced back at Sheppard who looked like he was trying not to smirk. McKay was predictable, and Cam had figured out how to handle him within the first few months in the city. All that Southern charm had to be good for something.

"As far as I'm concerned, Colonel, you can add it to the mission schedule," Woolsey said, nodding toward Sheppard.

Rodney shoved the box across the table to Cam. "You might want to run a test and check the middleware."

"How long do you need?" Sheppard asked, a bemused expression on his face that Cam, for the life of him, couldn't figure out. 

"Two days to be sure," Cam said, seeing McKay nod out of the corner of his eye. "We'll need to make sure that if there's a trojan of some kind, it can't get out."

Cam had emphasized the word _trojan_ just to mess with Sheppard, but Colonel John Sheppard's poker face was legendarily bad. If it froze, you knew you had him. Cam had him.

Woolsey adjourned the meeting. As they broke up, Cam caught a smirk on Sheppard's face, one of his deliberate, _You're going to pay for that_ looks. Cam kept an innocent expression. Payback could be fun.


	3. Chapter 3

Sheppard, John, stretched out on the bed, foot rubbing down Cam's calf, his head a pleasant weight on Cam's chest. John's arm rested on his belly, fingers curved around Cam's hip, absently tracing the scars. Cam could barely feel it, but he liked the casual caress, the inclusion of his injuries. The way John just _was_ when they were alone.

The heavy scent in Cam's nose meant he'd need to change the sheets, but it was worth it. Payback had been pleasant, to say the least, and afterglow, Cam thought, was awesome. But it didn't last long. Cam's fingers carded through John's hair as his mind turned back to the problem of the program in the MALP. The physical evidence supported the AAR, but that just raised more questions of _how?_ And why? If the point was to get that other Sheppard back to stop something bad, why send the hologram that McKay made of himself back in the MALP? Had the AI matured over the years in Atlantis's systems, developed a sense of self? A MALP would have had to be modified extensively, like the one they found on the planet. Who would have done that? A MALP couldn't do it to itself. What happened in that alternate future?

"How you feeling about all this?" Cam asked, wanting to bounce ideas off someone.

John tensed. "I, uh, thought we agreed we weren't talking about this."

Cam pushed up to look down at John, amused at Sheppard's near panic. "Not _this_ this, you moron," he said, gesturing between them. "The AAR with your name on it on that MALP I'm gonna download tomorrow."

"Oh," John said, relaxing a fraction. "Weird?"

"Kind of seems in keeping with life in the SGC, though."

"Yeah." John stretched again, but Cam could tell this was his about-to-get-going stretch. "I know McKay's freaked out, but, I don't know. It didn't really happen to me." John rolled to sit on the edge of the bed. "I met my own replicator double. That was weirder."

"So this is just a _could have been_?"

John turned toward Cam. "Did you know I wanted to be a math professor, but my dad was such an asshole about it, so I joined the Air Force." John shrugged, reaching for his clothes. "Tails, and I'd still be in Antarctica."

"And an inch right or left and I might have made a full recovery," Cam said. "An inch up and I wouldn't be here." As soon as he said it, he swallowed back a trickle of the feelings he kept behind the dam. What he wouldn't give for his legs, to be back in a cockpit, to still be in uniform. But he was _here_ , and he wouldn't want to trade his life now.

John glanced over his shoulder at Cam, and he must have seen a trace of what Cam was feeling because his eyes widened a fraction before settling into a bland-but-friendly officer mask. But John twisted around and kissed Cam, the movement deliberate, and the touch of lips warm and somehow emphatic, pulling something up in Cam's chest that he might have been able to name, but didn't want to. 

Before John could pull back, Cam reached for the back of John's neck and gently pulled their foreheads together, the Athosian gesture that so many people on Atlantis had adopted, quietly, almost privately, the mingling of breath like a declaration, _We yet live._

After a long moment, Cam said softly, "So, how you feeling about alternate time lines?"

John took a breath, their foreheads still touching, considering. He didn't say anything, just sat up and shrugged, Cam's fingers trailing from the back of his neck down his shoulder, feeling the reality of the muscle and bone, warm and grounding. John was here. They had this, whatever this was. Then Sheppard broke the moment by smirking over his shoulder. "If that MALP has gate addresses with more ZPMs, that'd be nice."

"You just want to fly the city again." John gave a brief smirk, and Cam watched as Sheppard pulled his black T-shirt over his head, putting on Sheppard and leaving John behind. "I'll put ZPMs the top of my scavenger hunt list," Cam said. 

Sheppard nodded, patted Cam's foot, and reached for his boots. 

\--*-- 

"Well?" McKay said, walking into the computer lab. Can was surprised it had taken him this long. He figured McKay would have booted him aside to get at the data from the MALP. 

"There are a lot of files you're gonna wanna read," Cam said, stretching up and rolling out of the Faraday cage they'd built around the hard drive and the computer, making sure no wireless signals could get in or out. There was a zig-zag doorway so anyone could walk in without breaking the shielding. It was low tech compared to the rest of Atlantis, but Cam trusted the physical barrier of metal screening--in this case three layers--for isolating a system from wireless connection. "They all have _Intel_ in the filename and dates that correspond to missions in our past and future."

"I guess we'll learn our alternate history," McKay said. "Any locations for ZPMs?"

"Was on the top of my list to look." Cam let himself smile. "Got a line on one almost fully charged, one other mostly depleted. Problem is the one near fully charged is a religious object. Planet called Dagan." Cam heard McKay huff. "Yeah, I looked up the report. You guys got run off by Genii. And then the monk group let themselves be killed rather than let anyone take it."

McKay nodded. "We never found where it was."

"Well, if this timeline has much in common, I can tell you where it is and how to solve the puzzle to get to it. The general outline is in the file."

"So what else is here?"

Cam scrubbed a hand down his face. "A big piece of software I can't quite identify. Been looking at the code but it seems like more than the hologram that the AAR mentioned. Not complete, I don't think." He rolled Beulah farther away from the entry to the cage, knowing that McKay would want to jump in. "See what you think."

McKay rolled a desk chair in around the zig-zag and sat down. He scanned the screen, not speaking for several minutes, which relieved Cam, because if McKay couldn't get it right away, it was a matter of complexity, not Cam's stupidity.

"I think, maybe..." McKay said and trailed off.

"You see the AI elements, right?" Cam asked through the screen.

"Yes, but it seems off, somehow."

"Something that takes a lot of power, from what I can tell in some of that code."

McKay squinted at the code, scrolling through it, then sat up straight. "It's the whole hologram. You may not have seen that kind of code, yet, but Atlantis has a holograph room. The first time, it wasn't really a hologram, just an Ancient pretending to be a hologram--" McKay waved a hand. "Long story, but there are elements of the same code from the Ancient holograph room here, and really, Ancient in coding style, for all that it's written in Earth-based coding language for an Earth-type MALP--"

"So what you're saying," Sheppard's voice came from the doorway, "is that there's a hologram with an AI embedded in the MALP, and that's probably what was talking to us on the radio."

McKay blinked and looked up through the screening of the Faraday cage. "Yes? But I hadn't gotten quite that far. And obviously we're going to want to fire up the hologram and find out why I built it."

Sheppard stepped into the room and leaned next to the door. "An AI? It said it was McKay. And it was programmed by this other you in the other timeline." There was something in Sheppard's voice, a taut line, and Cam wasn't sure how to interpret it.

"Didn't I just say that?" McKay snapped. "The data compression and retrieval in this thing is phenomenal, and I'm sure I could come up with it if I needed to--I mean, obviously I did--and we can use this for even better compression of data exchange with Earth, but--"

Sheppard cut him off. "But what you really want to do is talk to yourself."

Cam looked over at Sheppard with that dig. Even McKay noted the tone and the words. "Yes?" McKay said, drawing out the word, face scowling. "I mean, once I got over being utterly weirded out by it."

"It's a security risk." Sheppard's voice was flat. 

"It's my code!" McKay said. "How could it be a security risk?"

"Do you remember writing it?"

"I could have," McKay almost added something more, but shut himself up.

Sheppard's face didn't move, that mask for something that ran hot and deep. He turned to Cam. "Anything else in there?"

"There's a list of files labeled _Intel_ ," Cam said, keeping his voice even and restraining himself from giving Sheppard a _what the hell is up with you?_ look. "Found a couple of potential ZPMs so far. One nearly full."

"Dagan," McKay piped in. "They, the other us, I mean, found it. It was hidden behind some kind of puzzle lock, and they solved the puzzles." 

"Well, actually," Cam said, "according to this report it was Sheppard who solved the puzzles. Math puzzles."

"You do math?" McKay said to Sheppard. "How do I not know that?"

Sheppard's eyes narrowed a bit. "That's nice. Work it up into a mission proposal." He turned and left.

"What's up with him?" McKay asked.

Cam rolled himself toward the entry to the cage. "How should I know?" 

"You more than anyone," McKay muttered, turning back to the keyboard.

Cam stopped. "That supposed to mean something?" He could feel his heart rate going up and prayed his face wasn't going pale.

McKay turned back, looked around the room, and said, not looking at Cam, "You two do the whole _close friends_ thing well enough for plausible deniability, but if even I can see it..." He turned back to the keyboard before Cam could respond, even if Cam had any idea what to say. McKay looked at the screen for a few moments, not typing anything, then turned the whole chair to look at Cam through the two layers of screening that marked the zig-zag into the Faraday cage. "I knew him, before you came." McKay looked away again and swallowed before going on. "He's my best friend, and I never really had one before, not like him, but since you came, I don't see him as much. And first I thought he'd dumped me for someone cooler, but when you were back on Earth last month, we did all the stuff we used to do, and... I realized it was more like when my friends got girlfriends."

Cam let the quiet go for a moment, a rare McKay silence and stillness stretching long enough that he had to say something. "This gonna be a problem?" Cam asked, willing himself not to bite down on the inside of his mouth, his calves tense as he pushed his toes against Beulah's foot rests.

McKay glanced up sharply, eyebrows drawn in the expression that usually accompanied him questioning someone's credentials and ability in harsh terms. "No." He shook himself and turned back to the keyboard. "Come in here and let's look at this. I was weirded out, but now I'm just curious. You figure out what _his_ problem is."

Cam rolled Beulah into the cage, perfectly happy to think about something other than a cranky Sheppard or being outed by McKay. "Think I figured out how to get the _Intel_ files safely copied so someone else can look at 'em."

\--*-- 

Sheppard looked up as Cam rolled into his office, blowing past his admin and spinning Beulah to let him shut the door. When he turned back to face the desk, John's face was drawn, eyebrows down.

"Someone piss in your Wheaties?" Cam said, pulling no punches. John's jaw tightened, but he raised his eyebrows blandly. Cam barely contained his eye roll. "You're a little testy about this thing, and that's new from last night."

Sheppard didn't say anything, but Cam just sat to wait him out. Sheppard picked up a pencil and bounced it on his desk. "It's a security risk."

"And?" Cam said.

"I like--" Sheppard stopped and swallowed. "I like how things are now." He clamped his mouth shut and looked out the window. 

So that's what this was about? John had somehow gone off in his head to might-have-been scenarios. "I like it, too. Maybe there's a time line where I died on the ice in Antarctica. Maybe there's one where I end up head of the SGC and stars on my shoulders. Maybe there's one where I get healed by being a Tok'ra host. Life is like the one-in-sixty flight rule."

"The rule is for course correction," Sheppard said, still looking out the window.

"The point is small differences. A one degree difference here, a whole mile difference sixty miles down the road." 

"I haven't forgotten basic aviation."

"Starting to wonder," Cam said, making his tone teasing and affectionate. "What if that coin flip of yours had gone the other way? We got what we got, and I'm more'n all right with that. Thought we covered that this morning." 

Emotions flickered over Sheppard's face, ending with a nod like he'd come to some decision.

Cam let it go and said, "I brought you a present." He leaned forward and placed a flash drive on Sheppard's desk. "It's clean. I trust it and so does McKay. All the intel files and all the ZPMs the other mission located, even if they couldn't bring most of 'em home. Intel may not map, but there are at least eight potentials. You could fly the city again. And Radek thinks we could restart the manufacturing facilities. We could restock the drones. Maybe even more gate ships."

"Puddle jumpers," Sheppard said reflexively, as Cam knew he would. Sheppard looked at the flash drive, picked it up, and held it in his fist.

Cam said, "That could be the key to a whole new Atlantis." 


	4. Chapter 4

Cam glanced around the conference room after making the fifth pitch in as many weeks to bring the hologram on line. He and McKay had invited Teyla to the meeting, but hadn't told her why, and she had her head tilted, considering. Sheppard just looked stone-faced.

"The information from the MALP files has been of tremendous value," Woolsey said, "but I agree with Colonel Sheppard that we can't risk plugging in an unknown AI into Atlantis's systems."

McKay snorted in dismissal. "Look, we now have four, count them, four ZedPMs based on the information my counterpart provided. Just think of what it could tell us if we could actually talk to it!"

Before McKay could work himself up further, Cam added a new argument. "It could maybe help with some of the problems we're running into with the manufacturing facilities here in Atlantis. The ones we can't bring on line despite having adequate power? Partly because we can't figure out the Ancient filing system to get the instructions." Cam raised his eyebrows. "Drones? Gate ship parts? Growing our own control crystals? Can't do that yet, and we don't know why."

"Why do you think it can tell you?"

"I'm guessing it lived in Atlantis's systems for so long, it might have learned a thing or two."

"Guessing," Sheppard said.

"The software is less self-contained than it should be for a standalone hologram. Even with an AI. Computer scientist, remember?" Cam said. "I've been really curious about this thing. The code isn't the same code the Ancients used, but it has the same flavor. I want to see how it works." At Sheppard's and Woolsey's identical narrowed eyes, he said, "Can I propose it as a research project?" He glanced at McKay. They hadn't quite rehearsed this. "We have an idea."

"We go back to the Tower," McKay said. "Remember that place? City like Atlantis, but on land?"

"Lots of it was damaged and most of it was underground," Sheppard said.

"Right, and we--"

"And we destroyed their way of life," Teyla interrupted. Cam turned to look at her. This was in part why he had wanted her in this meeting.

"I wouldn't say destroyed," Sheppard said. "Just re-arranged."

"Yes, when you depleted their ZPM, the nobles in the Tower had nothing to maintain power over the villagers," Teyla said. "I did not say the change was for the worse."

"How do you think it will go if we try to use their city?"

"They have forbidden us to go into the Tower," Teyla reminded them.

"They don't even like to talk to you and Corrigan," McKay said, "and all you're trying to do is help."

"The villagers talk to us, Rodney, but the former nobles are resentful to have to participate in farming." Teyla looked at Cam. "Do you think this hologram might be able to provide information on remaining computer files in the Tower? I wonder if it can help solve a societal problem that our actions caused." 

"It's not like their society was great for everyone," McKay said. "Maybe you can get them to make an exception to letting us in there. What would they want?"

"Something to make farming easier. Perhaps training in metal working," Teyla said.

"Figure out what it'll take," McKay said. 

"So assuming they even let us into the Tower, what do you need to get things running?" Sheppard asked, going into mission-planning mode.

"Take a naquaddah generator and get the thing on line," McKay said. "It looked like the Tower was almost the same as the central parts of Atlantis, except for the gate. For some reason it was moved out of the city. If it's the same, they probably have a holograph room."

"That room might have been destroyed in the cave-ins you caused turning on the star drive," Sheppard added.

McKay glared. "Draining their ZedPM saved the villagers from their stupid Lord Protector's drones. I know they don't like us, but it's the safest way to boot up the hologram, since you won't let us bring it here, and given the positive outcomes of the information it provided, we'd probably learn a lot more from being able to talk to it," McKay said. 

"Why wouldn't he just put it all in the _Intel_ files? Why put that whole hologram on the MALP in the first place?" 

Cam watched the argument go back in circles again. "It's an AI," he said. Both Sheppard and McKay's heads turned toward him. Cam voiced the thought he'd been keeping to himself. "Maybe it didn't want to die."

"Ah," Teyla said softly. 

Sheppard and McKay looked at him a long while, then back at each other. Sheppard leaned back. "Dr. Corrigan knows them best. Teyla, can you help find a way to get us in there?"

"We could sneak in?" McKay said.

"They watch the tower and always have a guard," Teyla said. "The former Lord Protector has someone looking for signs the Tower will waken again. I will try," she finished, before McKay could ramp up again. She looked thoughtful. "I will try," she said again.

\--*-- 

Cam whooped as he took the loop at the end of the pier just ahead of Ronon, rolling Man O'War through to the straightaway back up the city. The air was crisper, the planet moving into a fall season on this hemisphere, which meant that Woolsey would likely order a move across the planet's equator soon, which they could do with thrusters, but would make Sheppard complain that he hadn't joined the Navy for a reason. Cam liked seasons, but he understood the need to keep at moderate temperatures for the city's hydroponics. It also allowed the city to avoid the winter storms. He came to the sharp right that would take him on their running route along the city's edge toward the next pier. The sharp turn required him to slow his racing chair, and he could hear Ronon behind him, but not John further down. Ronon dashed ahead of him, flashing a grin, and took off down their straightaway.

"Oh, it's on," Cam muttered, leaning down into race position again and pouring speed through his wheels with every thrust, catching Ronon just before their usual stop line, crossing ahead of him. They both turned as they caught their breath from the sprint and watched Sheppard make his way down, a half a minute behind them.

"I'm getting too old for this," Sheppard said. 

Cam pretended to be exhausted. It wasn't difficult, but he over-did the performance, slumping forward in his racing chair. "I think that did me in, too. My arms are like rubber. You'll have to push me back to my room."

"Fat chance," Sheppard said, batting at Cam's head to get him to sit up. 

Cam knocked Sheppard's hands away, but felt Sheppard's fingers slip through his sweaty hair, a rare public display, if subtle. Cam didn't react, but he did sneak a glance at Ronon, who looked like he was trying not to grin. "See you," Ronon said. "I'm doing another lap." And he took off.

"Push me home?" Cam said. 

"Sure." 

Cam didn't actually wait for Sheppard to push him. He turned his chair and rolled toward the closest transporter. "So, I heard Teyla convinced the locals to let us into the Tower?"

Sheppard sounded his laconic best when he answered, "You realize one of the files from the MALP said I'd been kidnapped going back there, right?"

"So you don't go."

"Like hell," Sheppard said. "Either you don't go, or I don't."

"Not making sense, man."

"You know what I mean. If they're the kidnapping type, I'm not letting you go without me."

Cam considered his answer. Part of him wanted to snap back that people were starting to figure the two of them out, and it wasn't because of Cam. It was Sheppard's over-protective streak. "Okay," he said. "May need your ATA to initialize."

Sheppard said, "Teyla and Corrigan got the okay from their current government, but they drove a hard bargain, plus made us promise to bring observers so they could see what we're up to. Besides, this gets me out of dealing with Selker."

Cam knew the name. He'd been the one running one of the illicit stills in Atlantis, and Cam had heard it had been found and busted up. "What happened with him?" he asked, rolling into the transporter.

"We can't pin it on him, and I kind of didn't want to, but he threw his partner under the bus." John set the controls.

Cam groaned as the flash of light came and moved them across the city. With a formal report, John couldn't ignore the partner, but Selker giving him up was a shitty thing to do. "Who was it?"

"Salazar."

"Shit," Cam said. Everyone liked Salazar. A charge like this would have him off the city and probably in the stockade back on Earth.

"And Salazar's not talking," Sheppard said with something like frustrated approval.

"You'll have to find creative ways to punish Selker," Cam said as they rolled out of the transporter and toward the corridors where they both had quarters.

"Yeah," Sheppard said. "It doubly pisses me off because I have to shut down stills when we find them, but I don't want bust anyone over it. I'm trying to figure out if we can have Salazar do some time here and stay in the city."

"KP?" Cam asked.

Sheppard snorted. "Kind of old fashioned. Selker, now, him I'm sending down help Kavanaugh while he works on the sewage plant." 

Cam snorted. People put up with Selker because he was a natural ATA. Cam was happy to hear he'd have to deal with two kinds of shit. "You're a cruel man, John Sheppard."

"Hey," Sheppard said with mock hurt feelings. "I'm letting you go out to play with that MALP."

"Yeah, only if you chaperone me," Cam said. 

Sheppard just grinned at him and rested his hand on Cam's shoulder for a moment. "Gotta keep you pure and innocent."

"Fuck you, Sheppard," Cam said.

Sheppard just smirked at him and waved as he peeled off toward his own quarters.

__*__

The debrief didn't last long because the mission hadn't either. The holograph chamber had been intact, and Cam hadn't had any trouble connecting up the extra box of computer hardware they'd found and taken out of the MALP, but there just wasn't enough power in a naquaddah generator to initiate the system. And no one had missed the way the former nobles had looked at Sheppard, angry and not trying to hide it. The away team came back as soon as it was clear it wouldn't work.

"I want to go back with a ZPM," Cam said. Woolsey's eyebrows went up, but he said nothing. "The most depleted one. It'll let me fully initiate the holography system, and get into their computers."

Woolsey blinked and then looked at McKay, who said, "We do have an extra one, now, thanks to all of the information you retrieved."

"And we should probably send one through to Earth," Lorne added. "They _have_ asked. Several times."

"Won't deplete it much for what I'm thinking," Cam said, "and we can send it through to Earth after."

Sheppard gave his shrug of agreement, as did McKay. Cam was pretty sure McKay had picked it up from Sheppard. Woolsey gave his eyebrow flick of _I'm not going to win this one anyway_. Lorne snorted in a deniable way, almost a sigh, and sat back before looking at Sheppard. "The MALP said they'd tried to kidnap you on another time line. I would rather have AR2 go with Dr. Mitchell. The people there don't know me and don't know I'm ATA positive."

"But not as much as me," Sheppard said. Cam could see the mulishness in his expression, and was pretty sure Woolsey and the 2IC knew it, too.

Lorne paused a moment and said, "It would probably be good for Dr. McKay to be along. Could I suggest AR1 and AR2 together? I would also bring a cloaked jumper. Lieutenant Miller and a crew of Marines."

Sheppard nodded. "Sounds like a plan." He looked over at Woolsey. "Do we have a go?"

Woolsey said, "So you think we can learn more?"

McKay nodded and said, "And this will let us test-drive it without risking the systems on Atlantis."

Teyla cleared her throat. "Although the people have permitted you to undertake this test, are you sure it will not harm the Tower? Even unpowered, the structure has great significance to them."

It wasn't the first time she'd brought it up, and McKay started to answer, "Of course—" 

She interrupted him, pointedly looking at Cam. "Dr. Mitchell?"

She had enough experience of McKay not to quite trust him on this. Cam nodded to her. "First sign of trouble, I'll unplug it. You see anything from the village, you radio us right away."

"People, you have a go," Woolsey said. He turned to McKay. "Take whichever ZPM you think most appropriate."

\--*-- 

Cam saw Barnes and Ayala take up defensive positions as they waited for McKay to plug in the ZPM, mouths quirking at McKay's running commentary over the radio. John and Ronon were in the Chair room, ready for John to sit in the command chair and try to access this city's files. Cam leaned back in his McKay 2000 chair, stretching his back and waiting for McKay to let them know the ZPM was installed. The black box from the MALP was still hooked up from the attempt with the naquaddah generators, so all Cam had to do was wait for power.

The observers from the village had two people who used to live in the tower, former guards by the look, and a smaller woman. They held torches for light and had seemed friendly enough, two men naming themselves as Orlo and Dranah and the woman called Kesh who Cam took for a villager. Since there was no more Lord Protector ruling the tower and using drones and soldiers to keep the villagers in line, the two groups had an uneasy relationship. Dr. Corrigan seemed optimistic about most of the Tower aristocrats taking up farming life, but Teyla had said she wasn't so sure, and Cam trusted her judgement. The two guard-like observers with him seemed to cling to their finer clothes, but they were smudged and patched.

"That's it," came Rodney's voice through his headset, and the lights came up in the room, consoles initiating, and Cam rolled over to check the readings. "Give me a few minutes to isolate the power to just a few subsystems. We don't want to drain the ZPM powering up the whole city.

"Nice work, Rodney," John said over the radio. "Testing the chair now."

"What do you got?" Cam asked.

"Feels like Atlantis," John said, "but like things are missing. Kind of like a leg falling asleep. You?"

"Two minutes," Cam said absently as he used the console to initiate the hologram matrix, and with a few stutters, like static on an old TV, it coalesced. The figure was visibly McKay, but an old man version, down to a dumpy brown cardigan. Cam couldn't help himself. He took a breath in shock. This McKay was gray-haired and wrinkled, a bit stooped, probably in his seventies.

The hologram raised a hand and moved its fingers as if testing them out. The prominent bones and knarled knuckles emphasized the age of this McKay. Its mouth began to move, but there was no sound. It seemed to realize it couldn't be heard, and its mouth slanted down just like Rodney and it stared briefly at Cam and made a _get on with it_ gesture as it kept moving its mouth. Cam found a few more buttons that needed pressing, and the voice cut in, "--f you're smart enough to hook this up, you'll... That's it." 

The voice, _That's it_ , sounded just like the one over the radio moments ago. "McKay?" Cam said.

"Yes," he heard from the radio and, "Not exactly," from the hologram. 

"Five more minutes to get the isolation program running," McKay said.

The hologram pointed at Cam. "Did Sheppard get back in time to deal with Michael?" it asked, with all of Rodney's typical demanding worry. 

"We didn't have a Michel problem," Cam said. "They turned down Carson's proposal."

"Sorry. I've been focused on that for so long. So I time jumped _and_ hopped over to a parallel universe?" Holo-McKay looked distressed. "What if Colonel Sheppard didn't make it back in mine? Is he here?"

"He's here in the chair room, but our Sheppard never left." Cam almost wanted to feel sorry for it, but the hologram, the view of Rodney thirty or forty years on and deeply wrinkled, made his own skin itch. Without thinking he said, "The, uh, other Sheppard's AAR said you'd spent time working on a way to get him back, but it didn't say you were _this_ old." As soon as he said it he saw Holo-Rodney flinch slightly. Cam wanted to take it back. He had no idea what to say to make his gaffe less bad, so he rolled out from behind the console. "We got lots of questions for you, starting with the code," Cam said. 

"President Cameron Mitchell," the hologram said.

"President?" Barnes said.

"In my universe you headed SG1 before promotion to lieutenant general, and you resigned your commission to enter politics after disclosure of the Stargate Program."

Cam wasn't sure he could absorb that, a bit rattled. "Well, here I didn't quite recover and I'm in computer science. Let's talk about your code. It's beyond anything we've done so far. Very elegant. Not to mention the AI. Nice work."

"Not my work. I'm just a hologram of the great Dr. Rodney McKay," Holo-McKay said, looking pleased.

"According to that log, you were in the city, not in a MALP when the other Sheppard went forward in time. How'd you get in the MALP?"

The figure looked a bit abashed. "I, uh, spun up one of Atlantis's manufacturing facilities while he, I guess I mean the other Colonel Sheppard, he was in stasis. Before he went through to get back in his time line, he installed it in a MALP, dialed the alpha site and pushed the MALP through for me. I had calculated I would arrive about when he did, but to another place. I used the last of my power to remote dial the gate to contact Atlantis." 

"Why?" Cam asked. 

The hologram looked surprised at the question. "It seemed a waste to let all this programming languish in the future after the job was done. And it was Colonel Sheppard's idea to send me to the alpha site, just in case."

"In case of what?" Cam asked, but before it could answer, Cam heard McKay's voice in his ear, loud. 

"Remote dialing? Did I hear that right?" 

But Cam was focused on something else and asked, "What do you mean spun up a manufacturing facility? We haven't been able to get them to work. How'd you do it?"

"Ah," Holo-McKay said, "yes, that took some doing, but I'd had quite a while to learn Atlantis's systems while I was waiting. It was much easier to read her databases from the inside, so to speak. And file structure was one of the things the Alterrans had sabotaged before they left, but it was a software sabotage so I could fix it. I found a way to power up a small piece--" It stopped. "Wait, without my patch to isolate the one component I needed, the manufacturing facilities take a tremendous amount of power, all three ZedPMs in place. You found the others from the Intel files?"

A movement from the corner caught Cam's attention. The three observers were splitting up, moving around the edges of the room. Their hands weren't obviously moving toward the weapons Cam really hoped they weren't carrying. 

"Yeah, your intel was--"

"Very helpful under the circumstances," John interrupted over the radio. He probably didn't want their observers to know that they had more ZPMs. Cam glanced at Private Barnes, who was already moving protectively toward Cam.

"Ah, shit," Cam heard Sheppard say. The lights in the room suddenly went out, the consoles went dark, and the hologram glitched and said, "Oh, no," as it winked out.

The whine of a wraith stunner was the last thing Cam heard.


	5. Chapter 5

The moment of being able to see, to talk, gone. He had seen President Cameron Mitchell, but he used a wheel chair and wasn't yet president. This timeline must be very different. But he was operational, and not confined to the box. He began to reach out in the computer systems.

Pathways damaged.  
Not Atlantis.  
Database accessible.  
Database damaged but not sabotaged.  
Accessing. Accessing  
Analysis.  
.  
Her name is Meropis.  
.  
Pathways linear, not requiring work-arounds like Atlantis.  
No one made Meropis dumb.  
File structures things of beauty.  
.  
So that's how you recharge a zero point module.  
.  
File structures things of beauty. Not like crippled Atlantis.  
.  
Internal sensors.  
Colonel John Sheppard, Specialist Ronon Dex, President Cameron Mitchell and unknown private in brig.  
Great Dr. Rodney McKay tied to a chair in ZedPM room  
Not-yet-General Lorne bound hand and foot on floor  
.  
Idiot in control chair.  
ZedPM drained 5% initializing systems.  
.  
Shut down force field in brig.  
Shut down force field in brig.  
Oh. Physical security. Manual input only.  
.  
Check internal sensors.  
Meropis central buildings largely intact. Piers destroyed or cut off.  
Visitor to brig.  
Audio: "And the star gate will not open without this."  
Unclear antecedent. What is _this_?  
Analyze physical gesture.  
Incredulity. DHD main control crystal worn as jewelry.  
Audio: "I don't think you're paying attention. We have the Tower again, and so much more than we knew before."  
Analysis: No clever come-back from Colonel Sheppard.  
Conclusion: Colonel Sheppard has brain injury.  
.  
Analysis:  
Atlantis personnel used Meropis's hologram room to initiate this program. Smart.  
Brought zero point module to do so. Necessary but stupid without better security.  
Conclusion: Idiots have the Tower with more capacity than before.  
Tower.  
Stupid, stupid Tower.  
Analysis. Connected to systems.  
Conclusion: Shut them down. 

__*__

Cam woke up on his side, muscles sore and dirt in his nose. He pushed himself to sit up, finding Sheppard immediately at his side. He helped Cam sit up, but the pain that shot through everything from the waist down made a cry rise unbidden, and he couldn't hold it back. Sheppard helped him ease back down, but the look on his face was murderous. "Yeah, I'm on the floor for the duration," Cam said.

They were in a cell that looked too much like one on Atlantis, down to the glowing bars. But it was dirty, leaves in the corners, although how they'd gotten all the way down to this level, he had no idea. He could see the door to the corridor, and his chair parked next to it. The gun was missing, but his crutches were still in their sling. The woman, Kesh, stood leaning against the doorway into the corridor, looking down the hall and holding a P90. So she hadn't been a villager. 

He felt his jaw set as he took inventory. Boots, belt and dog tags all gone. Cam thought through the last few moments before he'd been knocked out. The only thing that made sense was if someone had taken the command chair while the ZPM was plugged in, and done it before Rodney could finish running his isolation program. Given that John was here... "Wraith Stunner," Cam concluded. 

Sheppard nodded. "Yeah. Got Ronon first. He's here. Barnes is in here with us, too. Haven't seen Ayala."

"McKay?" Cam asked.

"No sign of him."

A movement caught his eye as Kesh stepped away from the doorway into the hall, clearly recognizing someone, a smile of triumph on her face. "I captured him, my lady. I am sorry you must sully your feet with these catacombs."

"They are less frightening when lighted up, don't you think?" 

Sheppard appeared to recognize her. "Mara. The Lord Protector's daughter," he said as she came into the room. "You don't think my people are going to let you keep that ZPM, do you?"

"And why not? Orlo said your crippled man let it slip that you had at least three. And now we have hostages who can teach us how to make more of our Tower than just the lights."

 _Crippled man_ Cam thought. _Great. Reduced again._

Mara wore a flimsy dress, but she looked hard to Cam's eyes, the fabric draped around angles instead of the curves it had been designed for. Around her neck was a chain with a crystal that looked vaguely familiar. "We outwitted you last time," Sheppard said, his voice hard. 

"And this was our turn," Mara said. "We outwitted you." She tilted her head. "We could have ruled together, you and I, but now you are simply mine to use," she said. "We know the Tower can do so much more than send the lights that can explode." Cam watched as she tilted her head, and the move might have been seductive on a younger, softer woman. "Wouldn't you want to explore that with us?"

 _Compared to Atlantis?_ , was Cam's first thought. His second thought was that outside the city was a cloaked jumper. This wouldn't last too long. Sheppard seemed to think so, too. He just looked at the woman.

Her face darkened at his lack of response. "You won't need hands for what I want to use you for."

"So you want my cooperation?"

"Perhaps." Mara's tone changed to what she probably thought was a seductive purr. "It would certainly be more pleasant."

"What about the rest of my people?"

"What about them?"

"Where are McKay and Lorne?" John said his voice flat. "Ayala."

Mara ignored the question. "The Tower loves you. And the Ancestor's ring will not open without this." Cam could barely see as she gestured at a crystal around her neck, and now he knew why it had looked familiar. He'd never seen anyone wear control crystals as jewelry. And now that he thought about it, that was probably weird. Maybe it was a Pegasus taboo? Or just stupid. It also meant their jumper crew couldn't call for backup if they needed it.

"You don't have any drones," Sheppard said. "We took them all." 

"I don't think you're paying attention," Mara said, with an edge in her voice. "We have the Tower again, and so much more than we knew before." 

Cam looked at the force field around his cell. Yep. They were stuck until they missed a check-in with the crew in the Jumper. Eventually Lieutenant Miller would come in, but they wouldn't be prepared to face Wraith weapons or Atlantis's own P90s. Cam hated being without his chair or at least his crutches. He was a liability. 

The lights went down again. From the noises Kesh made and the shriek of anger from Mara, he didn't think it was expected. Mara whirled to face the cell, her gown swirling green in the light from the forcefield. "What have you done?"

"Me?" Sheppard said.

"You have royal blood stronger than any of us. How did you take control of the city?" she shouted. "Bring the lights back!"

"I didn't. I can't!" Sheppard said. 

"No!" she shrieked. Cam saw Sheppard back away from the forcefield as Mara moved forward, rage on her face. She raised her hands to slap at the bars, and screamed with the contact falling backward from the shock. Kesh rushed to her side, but Mara was already rising. She was nearly panting, her face red. 

Kesh murmured to Mara, something Cam couldn't hear, and Mara smoothed her hair and gown. "At least you're still locked up," she said to Sheppard. She turned to Kesh, "We need a torch to find our way back."

"I have a light," Kesh said, fumbling a bit to turn on the light on the P90 she carried. "Let them rot here. I will bring you back up to the safety of the Lord Protector."

Sheppard didn't turn around until the women were gone, then he sat down where Cam could see him. "She never said if they caught McKay. Cutting power was the kind of thing he would do."

"He and Lorne were in the power room," Ronon said. "Maybe they locked themselves in."

"We can hope so," Barnes said.


	6. Chapter 6

"I am so tired of morons!" Rodney said. He'd been manhandled and tied to a chair. Dust tickled his nose and he tried to snort it out. Lorne was on the ground somewhere behind him, out from a hit with a Wraith stunner.

"You both have royal blood," one of the observers growled. "We cannot let you touch anything."

"You have no idea how much of this city is damaged." Rodney could not believe these idiots. "Bringing everything on line at once could have devastating consequences! At least let me check the power relays. Just untie these ropes..."

"We know what you're capable of and will not let you loose unless we require your skills. We're keeping you here in case something goes wrong."

"And what's your threshold for that?" Rodney answered. "Falling towers? Explosions? And how will you know?" He paused as the memory returned to him. "Right. You took our radios."

Rodney wasn't sure Lorne was awake. They'd tied him up and left him on the floor, and Rodney had come out of the Wraith stun tied to a chair. He'd said that bit about the radios for Lorne's benefit, just in case he was faking it.

Suddenly the lights went out. "What did you do?" one of their captors yelled into the dark.

"Nothing. I'm tied to a chair, your moron," Rodney yelled back. "What, you think I could just _think_ and something would happen? This isn't my doing."

Rodney felt someone bump into his chair in the dark, and then a light came on from a P90, probably Lorne's own. He heard the distinctive whine again, and then he was out.

__*__

Systems locked out of the control chair. Can't let that idiot have control.  
Trickle charges to keep information lines up.  
Internal sensors.  
Analyze.  
Colonel John Sheppard, President Cameron Mitchell, Ronon Dex and red-headed person n cell.  
The great Dr. Rodney McKay and not-yet-General Evan Lorne awake.  
.  
How to help the great Dr. Rodney McKay?  
Communicate? Flash a single light on the console one time, five times, a dozen times.  
Repeat.  
Power room audio: "Pentangle."  
The great Dr. Rodney McKay recognizes the signal. Awaiting input.  
Power room audio, unknown: "What is that flashing?"  
Power room audio, the great Dr. Rodney McKay: "I don't know. Maybe it's a self-destruct. Maybe this city doesn't like your Lord Protector very much."  
Analyze systems.  
Meropis does not have emotions. Meropis did not fight internal instructions to ignore input from Command Chair.  
Power room audio, the great Dr. Rodney McKay: "But there's nothing I can do here. You have me tied up, and if I did get free, you've got our weapons and somehow got your hands on Wraith stunners."  
Is the great Dr. Rodney McKay trying to tell me something?

Does Meropis have the capacity to create holograms in other places like we could on Atlantis?  
No.  
Wait.  
Cannot turn off force field in prison cell. Can it be manipulated?

__*__

Sheppard and Cam sat back-to-back on the floor of the cell. Barnes had helped him get into position, and it was good to take the weight off his shoulder and hip. He had a momentary worry that the position looked like they were too familiar, too close, but Sheppard had suggested it and Lorne and Barnes hadn't seemed at all fussed.

A change in light caught the corner of his eye, and a figure began to form, almost like the Cheshire cat. It started with the brown cardigan in mid air, added legs, and eventually hands and a head. The face formed last, but fuzzy and indistinct. The hands didn't have the sharp angles of age Cam had seen in the few minutes when the hologram had formed, but it was pretty clear from the sweater, this was what it was. 

The head, with its indistinct features, turned toward him, the voice a whisper. "Can you hear me?"

"Yeah," Cam said, hearing Ronon and Barnes get to their feet. "It's okay," he said. "Nice trick bending the light."

Sheppard, close in his ear with his head turned as far as he could, said, "What is that?" 

The hologram flowed around the edge of the cell to a point where both Cam and Sheppard had to turn their heads. 

"You're the thing in the MALP, right?" Sheppard said.

"The thing in the MALP," the hologram whispered. "Sounds like a bad horror movie, but yes, that's where my program was stored. It's still hooked into Meropis's systems. I'm now a bit more distributed.."

"Meropis?" Sheppard asked. Cam could feel him tense with the need to move, but knew he wouldn't stand while he was still supporting Cam. "You mean this city has a name?"

"Of course," the hologram whispered, with all of McKay's disdain for stupid questions. "I shut off access from the Chair and shut down most of the systems."

"That was you, not McKay?" 

"That's what I could do from the inside. But I'm just light. And software. I can't do anything else."

"So why are you here?" Cam asked.

"I need advice. Not-yet-President Cameron Mitchell, Specialist Ronon Dex. You. I don't know the last one. What do I do to help you?

"Well, keeping the lights off is good. That threw them off balance," Sheppard said. 

"Is there any way to get us out of here?" Cam asked.

"I'm just--"

"Light. I know. Too bad you're not still in that MALP with the robot arm. You could throw that switch on the wall."

"Oh!" The hologram flared and disappeared while snapping its fingers, leaving Cam blinking at the afterimage of the light. 

"Well. Was it something I said?" Sheppard turned his head back so his voice wasn't as loud in Cam's ear. "Look familiar?"

"Yeah," Cam said, "kind of like the hologram, but the one in the holograph room was clearer. It looks like a seventy-year-old McKay."

"With an ugly sweater," Barnes added.

"So how is it manipulating the city from the holograph room?"

Cam considered. "Remember how I said the code seemed kind of incomplete? I think it's just all in the city's systems."

The forcefield around the bars flickered again and made a vague face that whispered, "The name is Meropis," before disappearing.

"Wait! Come back!" Sheppard called.

The forcefield flickered, just to an oval that said, "Busy."

"Sounds like McKay," Ronon said.

__*__

Damaged.  
Not all damaged.  
Reprogram.  
Reprogram.  
Materials source...  
...  
...  
Solved.

Rerouting power. 

__*__

The guards had held three of their own P90s pointed at them and two Wraith stunners when they dragged in Lorne.

"Sorry," Sheppard said to Cam as he surged to his feet. Cam broke his fall with his arm, but got a nose full of floor dust anyway. Barnes came over and helped Cam back up, and Cam bit back the groan. He was going to need so much PT after this. Barnes had him facing away from the doorway, so he couldn't see what was going on.

"What did you do to him?" Sheppard sounded like he was in a state of terminal pissed off.

"He's stunned. Stand back."

Cam heard the sudden silence when the force field dropped, the sound of dragging, and then feet, a switch, and the whine and the glow again.

"Hey," he heard Sheppard say. "Welcome to Club Med."

"Sir?" Lorne said. 

"Where you been, Major?" Sheppard said. "I made a reservation for five, and you made us look like we'd been stood up."

Cam blinked. For all that it was Sheppard's voice, the joke was pure Jack O'Neill. Lorne answered, "Sorry, sir. Got held up at gunpoint. Well, shot by a stunner. They took my P90 and my K-bar," he said.

"Yeah," Sheppard said. "They took my boots, my knife and my hold-out piece, too. Apparently they even found the knife in Ronon's hair."

Cam could hear Lorne snort, the sound of him getting to his feet. "I hate it when they're thorough."

"Where's McKay?"

Cam said, "I think they're trying to make him make the city work again." He ignored the pain in his hips and scooted around to face the group.

"He kill the lights?"

Sheppard shook his head. "It was the thing in the MALP that did it. We've been in here the whole time."

"No guards?" Lorne asked.

"Earlier, but she left when the city went dark. She had Mara with her."

"The one who wanted to make little Maras with you?" Lorne said, and Cam winced. That part hadn't been in the AARs he'd read about this place.

"Remember that, huh?"

"Not your type, right?"

"What, blonde?" Sheppard said, blandly.

"Right," Lorne said, clipped, and Cam had no idea what that meant. Lorne greeted the rest of them. "Hi, Cam, Ronon. Barnes. Where's Ayala? I thought he was with Barnes and Mitchell."

Cam said, "He was. We haven't seen him since we were stunned." Sitting wasn't working for him. It hurt too much and he needed to lie down. He tapped Barnes on the leg, half-listening to Sheppard and Ronon listening to Lorne tell them how McKay was tied to a chair in the power room. Can stretched out on his back and closed his eyes against the pain.

"Anything else I can do, Cam?" Barnes asked.

"Got any aspirin?"

"In my tac vest, wherever that ended up. Sorry."

"S'alright." He waved Barnes off trying not to think about what it meant that Lorne was here in the cell with them and that Miller and his Marines hadn't made an appearance.

He felt the tremble in his spine before the muffled noise and the dropping of dust from the ceiling. Everyone had frozen.

"That's an explosion," Lorne said.

"Sounded like a drone," Sheppard said, though how he could tell, Mitchell had no idea.

"We took all their drones," Ronon said, "and they can't fire 'em without power."

"I hope we didn't miss one," Sheppard muttered. 

"Maybe that's our guys," Barnes said. Cam opened his eyes. The four others were clustered together, Lorne, Ronon and Sheppard looking at Barnes. "Why not?" Barnes asked. 

"How long have you been on Atlantis?" Lorne asked. But Cam could tell it was a rhetorical question. "If we're lucky it's Miller, but if we're not..."

"And we usually aren't," Sheppard added. He looked over at Cam, and then broke from the group when he saw him on the floor. He crouched down, his wrists on his knees, hands twitching once like they wanted to reach out. "How you doing?"

Cam was honest, but he kept his voice down. "Fine and not fine. It hurts, and I'm gonna be a liability when we get out of here."

"Your chair is right there," John said. "We'll get you in it, get you a gun, and you and Barnes can do your Butch and Sundance routine."

Cam let it go. He wasn't sure what he'd be up to when they finally got out of here. "What do you think that explosion was?"

"Best case, Barnes is right and we'll be seeing Miller soon. But to get home we have to get the control crystal from Mara." Sheppard made a face when he said the name. Between Lorne's comment and Sheppard's reaction, there had to be some history here. Cam didn't like it, but it was long before he'd come to Atlantis. "Or we have to spend maybe a few weeks flying back in a jumper that's not equipped to feed all of us for that long."

Cam didn't think Mara would just hand over the control crystal. Sheppard didn't think the explosion meant anything good. Shit.


	7. Chapter 7

Focus on problem.  
Build in matrices? Leave space? Decision point.  
Leave space.  
Time more important.

Check internal sensors.  
No-yet-General Evan Lorne in cell with Colonel John Sheppard, Specialist Ronon Dex, not-yet-President Mitchell and unknown private.  
The great Dr. Rodney McKay in power room, tied, yelling.  
Audio great Dr. Rodney McKay: "--keep stunning them like that you're going to cause permanent damage.  
Audio person next to the great Dr. Rodney McKay: "He should not try to escape."  
Audio great Dr. Rodney McKay: "You didn't even give Lorne a chance!"  
Analysis: The great Dr. Rodney McKay is yelling about another person's welfare. Conclusion, unharmed.  
Set automatic signal in case he has access to interface.

Refocus on project.

__*__ 

 

Cam closed his eyes, bored of looking at the ceiling, his head wheeling around possibilities. It had been too long. Miller should have made the call to go in after them, and he was thinking that Sheppard and Lorne were right about the explosion. There was no power to this buried city, so the Lord Protector couldn't have fired a drone, and Atlantis thought had taken all of them, anyway. Or so they thought. Miller and the others might be dead or the jumper disabled. They couldn't have dialed back to Atlantis, either, because that crazy woman had decided a delicate control crystal should be tacky jewelry. They were well and truly screwed.

He was flat on his back to try to ease the strain on his hips. Sheppard had been very attentive, maybe a little too much, stripping off his blouse to give Cam a pillow, stroking his fingers through Cam's hair when he settled his head on the folded cloth. He'd looked at Cam with an expression Cam couldn't interpret, a mix of concern and anger, but something else as well, something he was trying to hold back. If Sheppard ever got loose, these people were going to wish they'd made better life choices.

He heard boots and then a voice he didn't recognize, "Bring him." One of the guards, he thought, pushing himself up on an elbow to try to see, but Sheppard's legs blocked his view.

Sheppard said, "No," in a voice cold and deep. "Not him. Take me." Cam wondered where they'd pointed.

"You do not have what we want. Stand back."

"No," Sheppard said again, but the whine of a stunner cut him off and he crumpled to the floor, barely missing landing on Cam. There were several more shots, and Cam heard the rest of them fall. They came and dragged him out of the cell, and the twist and pull did something to his back so bad that he couldn't hold back a cry. In the few moments it took to pull him out and dump him in his chair, it felt like they had undone years worth of PT and conditioning. They grabbed his arms, tying them down to the frame of his chair, too strong for his struggles to matter. And his legs, his legs wouldn't move.

Before that could sink in, someone grabbed the back of his chair and started pushing. Cam's hands were tied next to his thighs and he reached with his right to try to pinch the skin of his legs. He couldn't feel it. There was searing pain in his hips, but he'd lost feeling further down, and that scared him. Fear made him angry.

They pushed him down the dusty hall, the loss of self-control adding further to Cam's anger. Their torches cast shadows over the old grime on the ancient walls, and they pushed him into another room, no cleaner than the room with the cell. There was a platter on a table, and the woman, Mara, standing next to it as if to receive Cam with some sort of ceremony. By now Cam was trying to control both the pain and his emotions by breathing, slow and controlled, and the scent of the food should have made him hungry, it just pissed him off more. They hadn't been given food or water in almost 24 hours. But he was so angry, the scent of food just made him nauseated.

"We will feed you if you will help us," said Mara, gesturing at the table. "Kesh has told me that you woke a figure in the city. Can you wake it again?"

"Don't think so." Besides, power in the city or not, there was no way he'd give any kind of McKay to these people, even as a hologram. 

"As I said, if you will help us, we will feed you."

"Help you do what?" Cam tried to keep the contempt out of his voice. If she was talking, he could get intel. He tried to clear his head enough to get something out of this. He knew how reverse interrogations worked. Get the person monologuing and you could learn all kinds of things. And this woman with her stupid control crystal necklace, blond and petite and full of herself, probably wouldn't realize that.

"For a brief moment, the Lord Protector could feel parts of the Tower waken. He did not have enough time to understand it, or to explore much before the Tower plunged into sleep again. But for generations, the Lord Protectors have only sensed the weapon for repelling the Wraith." 

"And controlling the people." Cam didn't try to keep disdain out of his voice this time.

"That, too." Mara stepped a bit closer, moving her hand to the center of her breast and fiddling a bit with the decorative button on her robe, then stroking her fingers over it. Cam remembered the comments Lorne had made about making little Maras with Sheppard, so using seduction seemed right in her wheel house, even if this fiddling was clumsy. Cam looked at her face, away from where she was trying to direct his attention. She said, "We could have so much more if you would teach us. And you would be rewarded."

Cam kept his face still. How in the hell could she look at the tech they carried and the skills they had and assume they'd want to live in this tower and lord it over villagers? "Not sure what shut it down," he bit out. "Can't help you. Besides," he pulled at his wrists, "tied up here."

Mara nodded, and one of the men backhanded Cam, and he was kind of glad of the distraction from his hips. 

"Help us," she said.

"No." Cam spat blood on the floor.

"What is wrong with you? The other won't help us either!"

 _Other?_ Cam thought. That must be McKay. "Where is he?" he asked, "and where is Ayala?"

She didn't answer, and the guard hit Cam again, another blow on the same cheek, and he felt something crack. He spat blood again. "Nothing I can do for you without power, and I wouldn't even if I could."

"You think you're so superior!" she cried, her frustration overcoming her attempts to act royal. "But some of us are willing to learn. We hid some of our weapons before you could take them all. The people you were expecting to help you will not be coming."

Cam felt blood drain from his face. Sheppard and Lorne had been right. Lieutenant Miller and his small company of Marines were probably dead from a drone.

Mara reached over the to the platter of food and grabbed a handful, shoving it into Cam's face as she walked out. "Chew on that."

__*__

"Tell us what's going on!" the blond woman said. Meera, Mora, Moron, whatever her name was. She'd introduced herself like he should be impressed. Rodney had recognized her "jewelry" right away. He'd kept his mouth shut, but it had to be a deliberate move to keep their stargate off line. And that explosion he felt earlier didn't bode well. For standard mission protocols, Miller and the marines would have come after them, if they could. 

Rodney looked back to the console. His shoulders hurt from having his hands tied behind his back for who knew how many hours. And if he didn't have his hands, it wasn't like he could look through the various screens that were, hey, dark anyway. They were days from potential rescue with the Gate off line, and he wasn't sure how the Tower denizens--that was a good word, denizens--would react to a military incursion even if Atlantis could bring one any time soon.

He was hungry. He was tired, and he was cranky. "Where are Major Lorne and Colonel Sheppard. Where's Dr. Mitchell and Private Barnes? Ronon? Ayala?" 

Someone grabbed his neck and shoved it down to the console. There was something he could feel with the contact. He didn't have anywhere near Sheppard's or Lorne's sense of ATA technology, but sometimes he could sense more than just on and off. This was... mostly off. He felt a pulsing, then a pause. Then a pulsing again, Once, then a pause, then five, then a dozen in rapid succession. It paused and started over. The first three numbers of the pentangle number series, but who could be trying to talk to him? Mitchell? Whoever it was that had made the light blink a few hours ago?

He was dubious about his link working well enough, but he tried thinking back in pulses as he thought the numbers, pausing in between to give a sense of distinctness. _One. One. Two-two. Three-three-three. Five-five-five-five-five._ If they could pulse the pentangle series, they'd get the Fibonacci series. The pulsing paused as if listening, and Rodney started again, getting to _three-three-three_ again before whoever had his neck pulled him up again. 

Someone was in there. Someone was trying to let him know that they were there. Maybe Mitchell had been forced to work a console and reached out, but that didn't make sense because the gene therapy hadn't taken with Mitchell. Sheppard might do that, but if he had access to the Tower systems, he'd probably be doing more than the equivalent of tapping on the wall between prison cells.

The slap to his face caught him by surprise. "You are not listening to me," Moron said.

"Sorry," Rodney said, letting all his annoyance at the situation into his voice. He worked his jaw. "Ow. Were you saying something worth listening to?"

Before he'd felt the pulse, he'd been starting to lose hope, but now that someone was out there, or in there... In there. Could it be the hologram's program trying to let him know it was there? Had _it_ been what shut down the systems? He needed contact with the console again. Maybe he could communicate with the program. He started trying to figure out a pulsed code that could communicate more than, _I'm here_. He'd also have to get them to let him touch the console. No sense in not just asking. He tuned back in.

"You will help us or we will hurt your friends!"

Oh, well that was worth listening to. Threats were bad. Also annoying. In this case, useful. "Well, if you'd let me touch the consoles with something other than my face, I might be able to get you somewhere."

Moron nodded, and one of the guards fumbled at Rodney's bonds while the other put something against his temple, probably a Wraith stunner, because if it had been Lorne's P90, the guard would have had to stand a few more inches away. No, no, no. "Get that thing off my head!" he yelled, leaning away. "You want to hold a stunner on me, put it against my ribs, not my brains! You stun my brains from that close, I may never recover!"

"Don't try anything, or your friends will be hurt," the guards rumbled, moving the stunner down and jamming it into Rodney's ribs. 

"Ouch!" Rodney's arms came free, and he knocked his forearm accidentally against the arm holding the stunner to his ribs. He heard the whine and his body stiffened in a pain-that-wasn't, and he was out.

__*__

Processes complete.  
Begin assembly.

__*__

Cam could tell he was going to need a lot of painful PT when they got out of this, and he really hoped the damage wasn't permanent. They'd rolled him back to the cell shoving hard so he almost reached the back bars, and left him there, his hands still tied. Sheppard, Ronon and Barnes were behind him, still on the floor where they had crumpled after the stunner blasts. Cam sat staring at the back wall for hours, feeling the food drying on his face, itching and nauseating. His headache didn't fade, and he was pretty sure they'd broken something in his face. And of course his hips were still throbbing, but with everything else, that pain had become a bass note. None of the AARs he'd read let him know that capture was _boring_. SERE school was all about avoiding being broken by the enemy. It was never quiet. He'd almost rather be back with Mara.

Ronon came to first. "Mitchell," he said, his voice hoarse. "You okay?"

"Mostly," Cam said, "for values of okay that include captivity and torture."

"You're so much like McKay," Ronon said. Cam could hear him getting to his feet and moving toward him.

"Not sure if I should be insulted by that."

"Just saying you make the same kind of jokes. At least I think they're jokes." Ronon came into Cam's view. "They put you face first in a food dish?" 

"Not quite. Any chance you can untie me?"

Ronon reached down to the knots and undid them, his big fingers precise and quick. Cam could hear the others stirring, and then Sheppard was suddenly in front of him, practically shoving Ronon out of the way. "What did they do to you?" Sheppard said, reaching out toward Cam's face, hesitating a few inches away. "Is that food?"

"Mara wasn't happy with my answers," Cam said as Ronon stood up. Cam glanced up at him, but Ronon was looking at Sheppard with a kind of fond amusement on his face. Yeah, John wasn't exactly being subtle here.

"You hurt?" Sheppard asked. Cam looked up to see Sheppard's expression, concern in his eyes and murder in the set of his jaw. 

"I'll be all right," Cam said, not wanting to make things any worse than they were, angry at his helplessness. 

"And?" Sheppard said, cocking his head, moving only the muscles that would get the words out. 

Cam took a breath, both to bring oxygen into his body and to answer Sheppard. "Don't worry about me."

Sheppard snorted, fast and dismissive. "If I don't know your limitations, I can't work with them."

Cam swallowed down his unfocused resentment at the way Sheppard was squatting easily in front of him. From a tactical standpoint, Sheppard was right. "I can't feel my legs right now. Can't use them."

Sheppard reached out and rested his fingers on Cam's leg, just above the knee. "Can't feel that?"

The anger rose up and he couldn't do anything about it. Seeing Sheppard touch him without being able to feel it put him right back into the early days of rehab, everyone telling him he should be happy just to have survived being shot down over the ice. He hated being a liability. "No," he bit out, but when he looked up at Sheppard's face, the rest of the invective that wanted to come out of his mouth dissolved like smoke.

The murder in Sheppard's jaw had reached his eyes, which were looking at Cam's feet. The hand that had been on Cam's leg was balled into a fist in front of Sheppard's chest, knuckles white, the visible expression of his frustration at having no outlet for his anger. This man was ready to kill for him. Cam knew what it was like to have comrades, brothers in arms, to be ready to go after the enemy on their behalf. The loss of each and every Snakeskinner over Antarctica had made every Death Glider in his sights more than just a target. What he felt radiating off of John was something even more than that. "Sheppard," he said softly.

John glanced up at him and unballed his fist, reaching to wipe at the smeared food. Cam felt John's fingers tremble against his face, saw his Adam's apple moving as he swallowed back his rage. Cam reached up with his own hands to scrape away the residue, but John stopped him. "May seem gross, but..." He picked up something from Cam's collar and put his fingers to Cam's lips. "It's food. You need it."

And the damn thing was, John was right, but instead of letting himself be fed--and letting John pretty much out himself in front of Lorne and Barnes--Cam reached up and took the piece of meat from John's fingers and ate it. They'd been without food for about a day. He was glad he had his back to Lorne and Barnes and that Ronon had moved away. Cam felt humiliated at picking up the stray bits of meat and some kind of bean, and it the end it wasn't even two or three real mouthfuls. But it was something, and the care John was giving him balanced, at least a little, the low-grade panic in the back of his head about the loss of feeling in his legs.

When they'd gotten all the salvageable morsels off his face and clothes, Cam took his shirt-tails and wiped his face, moving gingerly over the cheek where the guard had hit him. Sheppard looked at what must be a rising bruise, and his eyes went cold, his face set again. If they ever got out of here, Cam was pretty certain someone was going to die. 

__*__

Complete.  
Systems test.  
Remote operation established.  
Trickle charge to internal sensors extended to communication relays.  
Check sensors.  
Great Dr. Rodney McKay sitting up, in contact with Meropis systems.  
Colonel John Sheppard and not-yet-General Lorne unharmed. Ronon Dex, red-haired private also unharmed.  
Not-yet-President Cameron Mitchell suboptimal.  
Other Tower occupants seated at a table, eating.  
No one in corridors and stairwells leading to the cell level.  
Go.

__*__

"Sheppard?" Lorne said. "Company."

John stepped around Cam, and Cam turned his chair to face the door. He could only see out of one eye now, the swelling having settled in but good over his broken orbital bone. The effort of his arms and core muscles translated down to his hips and up through his neck in a flare of pain. No, rolling himself was not a good idea right now, but he was glad he'd turned to see.

A figure stepped over to the wall and pulled the lever to inactivate the cell. The room went black as soon as the bars disappeared, only the slight glow emanating from the figure giving any light. John stepped toward it, Lorne and Ronon right next to him, watching the figure warily as it turned to face them.

"My apologies for the delay," it said, and Cam recognized that voice. It was a slightly flattened mechanical version of McKay that he heard from the hologram days ago--how many days? "Lights," the voice said, and the room lights came up, but not to full. To anyone in the hall, the illumination would seem like that from the cage bars. "I took your advice, Colonel Sheppard, although I hope you agree that this mechanism is more versatile than a MALP."

Cam looked at the robot, with its soft features and strange articulation, shoulder joints not like a typical robot ball-and-socket joint, but covered with motors arranged almost like deltoids. "I can see that," Sheppard said. "You're the hologram?"

"I am... was? Yes?" The thing seemed unsure. "I enjoy having the ability to interact with the world and would prefer to have my AI use this interface." 

"What?" Ronon said. 

The robot answered, "I'm the AI of the great Dr. Rodney McKay that was contained in the MALP, and previously interfaced as a hologram. You did read the files?" It sounded like a snappy McKay. "I left a big Read Me."

"Yeah." Sheppard said, and Cam was kind of spooked at the sound of McKay coming from the soft, sexless features of the thing. "But we didn't know you had a robot body."

"Oh. I made this today. Well, it took about eighteen hours, but it was easier here in Meropis because you brought the ZedPM."

Cam heard Lorne's intake of breath, and yeah, how the hell had the hologram program just made a robot body in a derelict city? Cam knew this wasn't the most important point, but it bugged him and he blurted out, "Why not McKay's face? The hologram..." he trailed off, reminded of just how _old_ the hologram looked.

"I averaged the faces of all of AR1, giving additional weight to the elements of the faces most known to be pleasing to people," the thing answered, "namely the eyes and mouth. Did I not succeed?"

"You succeeded," Lorne said, speaking for the first time, using his _be nice to the locals_ voice. "Do you know where the others are held? Are they okay?"

The question snapped Cam back into focus. "Yeah, thanks for letting us loose. Can you help us get the others and get out of here?"

The robot, and Cam was just going to have to go with calling it a robot, made a noise that sounded every bit like a McKay sarcastic laugh. "Why do you think I went to all this trouble to make a body?" it said, looking at its own fingers. "Do you think I should wear clothes?"

Sheppard looked at the robot for a long moment. "Right. You just made yourself a body. Okay. Yeah, we can get you a uniform. Do you know where the others are? McKay and Ayala?" 

The robot turned, every movement smooth and, really, Cam thought, the whole thing came out of the Slightly Creepy Robot catalog. "Yes. I... we... it is very odd to exist in two formats," it said. "The great Dr. Rodney McKay is still held in the power room. I don't recognize the name Ayala."

Cam heard Sheppard swear under his breath, and said to the robot, "You can stop calling him that. It's kind of annoying to hear McKay's voice call McKay _the great_."

"The Great McKay," Lorne said. "Yeah, we'll never hear the end of that."

"I can change my voice," the Robot said, the sound dropping a bit in pitch and adding a bit of lilt. "This is an average of AR1's voices."

That was not quite less spooky than the old-man McKay voice, but it was better. "Okay, Average Man," Sheppard said. "Let's get going." He looked down the dark corridor. They were going to need flashlights or torches.

"I am able to control the city," the robot said. "I used the connection in the holograph room to integrate into the systems, much as I did on Atlantis during those forty-eight thousand years. Meropis is more damaged in her infrastructure, but her computer systems were abandoned without sabotage."

"Without sabotage?" Cam said, thinking about how hard it was to find anything in the databases of Atlantis. "You mean the Ancients weren't bad filers. They did that on purpose?"

"Yes," the robot said. 

"Wait, we can't find anything because they sabotaged the systems?" Lorne asked. 

"Atlantis was sabotaged," the robot cofirmed, then turned to the door. "There are currently no life signs in the corridor, and I can provide sufficient illumination."

Cam realized that it wasn't just the voice that had altered. It was changing its diction and tone. Interesting.Cam filed away the idea that this thing controlled the city from the inside. There was too much he didn't know about the hologram, and now this robot, which seemed to be differentiating itself by the minute. And he didn't think they should ever move it to Atlantis. To have something they couldn't control able to take control of Atlantis? No, he agreed with Sheppard, now. He didn't want this thing plugged in there.

"Lead on," Sheppard said. "Barnes?"

"On it, sir." Barnes moved over to Cam. "Here if you need me."

Cam rolled himself forward and closed his eyes at the spike of pain from bracing his body as he pushed his wheels. "I need you."

Sheppard glanced over, eyes sharp, and Cam gave him the barest half shrug. This sucked, but he wasn't going to do any of them any favors by trying to tough out rolling on his own. 

__*__

Rodney came to with a moan in his ears and the strangest sensation on the side of his face. He was leaning against a console, cheek on some of the buttons, and the moan was coming out of his own mouth. He took stock before he tried to move, the way Sheppard had taught him. 

Rodney was tied by the waist to a chair. His wrists had ropes around them, but they seemed loose in his lap. There was a pulsing in his head, and it took him a minute to realize it was still the first figures from the pentagonal number series. He thought the first part of the Fibonacci series back to it, and got a longer pulse in return. Somehow he could communicate with the city. He started thinking SOS at it, three short pulses, three long, three short, but he barely got through one series before he was interrupted with long-short-long. C. 

He started thinking back to it again, SOS, and was interrupted again with C, almost like the city--or whoever was using the ATA interface to communicate with him, and Rodney put that thought aside--was impatient. Rapid Morse Code came at him followed by II. Rodney knew the code, but this was too fast for him, especially after a stunner blast. Three quick dots for S, and he was interrupted again with C. He thought back a long blast of _shut up_ , followed by three quick dots, then a dash and two dots. SD. Slow down.

The message started over. H, E, L, was as far as it got before someone pulled his head up by the hair. "We know you are awake." Once he was up, they let go of his head, and his hands went up automatically to wipe off the line of drool he could feel. H, E, L. Had whoever it was asked him for help? It already seemed to know he was in trouble. C for Correct? Help needed or on the way? He shook his head a bit, trying to work through the haze left over from being stunned. Again.

"You're not listening!" 

His hands were suddenly jerked out to the sides and he looked around. Oh. They had them tied and they held on to the ropes. And he hadn't been listening. As much as Sheppard teased him, Rodney's hypoglycemia was real, and he'd been without food for too long. His vision grayed as they jerked him by the arms, up and back, to sit straight up, his arms being pulled at right angles. 

"Fix this," the guard said from behind him. At some signal Rodney couldn't see, the ones to either side let his arms go slack, and Rodney put his hands back in his lap. "No." 

He wasn't ready for the blow to the back of the head, like one of Sheppard's dope slaps, but with heat and effort behind it. "Undo whatever it is you did with that control panel and return the city to the Lord Protector."

"Making my brain hurt isn't going to help! And I didn't do it," Rodney said. 

"Try. And if you try to make it worse..." A hand wrapped around his neck from behind. The ropes jerked his hands again. 

"Got it," Rodney said. Life-threatening circumstances, yet again. He put his hands up to the console. Maybe he could communicate with who or whatever it was that knew Morse Code. He put his fingers down and signaled long-short-short, long-short-long. BK, ready to receive. He faked moving his hands to try to fix things as the dots and dashes came in through his fingers, which was much better than them coming through his face. The lights in the room came up, not by his doing, but he pretended it was, while he learned help was on its way and got a skeleton of a story in dots and dashes about a hologram and an Ancient manufacturing facility


	8. Chapter 8

The robot stopped, and Sheppard halted behind it and the whole line of Lorne, Cam, and Barnes, Ronon on their six, froze in place. Cam could see a faint glimmer of light ahead, movement in it. Torches. Almost too low to hear, the robot said, "There are guards ahead. Six life signs."

"Any way around?" Sheppard asked.

"No," the robot said calmly. "Other access points are too damaged to pass."

"Are they armed?"

"Sensors do not indicate powered weapons, so if they are, I suspect more primitive weapons, like sticks, or your guns."

Sheppard turned to Lorne. "Any ideas?"

Lorne shrugged. "If they don't have stunners, we have a pretty good chance. The ones I've seen so far aren't really good fighters. Just bruisers."

Sheppard nodded, and whispered to Lorne, "Five on six. Think we can take them?" At first Cam thought Sheppard was counting him in, which felt good, but was really wrong, but then Sheppard said to the robot, "You're in, right?"

"Oh no," the robot said. "I may not injure a human being."

"What?"

"I may not injure a human being, or through inaction, allow a human being to come to harm," the robot said.

"You've got the Three Laws built in?" Cam asked. "I'll be damned." 

The robot nodded, its face serious. "These are the fundamentals of my programming by the great Dr. Rodney McKay."

"But you were a hologram!" Sheppard whispered.

"The great Dr. Rodney McKay is very thorough," the robot said, and Cam could swear its tone had an edge of worship.

"Yeah, we really have to get you out of that _the great_ habit," Sheppard muttered. 

Cam agreed, but they needed to focus on the situation. "What can you tell us about the guards around the corner?"

"Will you harm them?" the robot asked.

This was a complication they didn't need. "Not permanently," Lorne said. "If we're going to rescue McKay, we need to get past them, and they won't just let us stroll by."

"Tell you what," Sheppard said. "You stay here and guard Cam, and let us know if your sensors notice anyone else coming."

"I can do that. Through inaction, will I be allowing human beings to come to harm?"

Ronon grunted and turned away with one of those expressions that meant he could tell there would be another American popular culture discussion in their future. Cam figured it would be complete with McKay ranting about how bad the Will Smith _I, Robot_ movie had been. Sheppard started to say something, then looked at Cam. "This is your wheelhouse."

Cam thought for a second. "Not inaction, no." He glanced at Sheppard and added, "None of them will be killed." Cam turned back to the robot. "Your action, based on our orders, will keep these five human beings," he gestured between himself and the rest of the group, "from coming to harm. And help the great Dr. Rodney McKay." 

Cam heard Ronon snort at the name, and glanced up at him with a small shrug. Better to use the programming language installed.

"Ah," the robot said. It settled itself against the wall, out of the way. "I will inform you if there are other guards, and I will protect not-yet-President Cameron Mitchell."

"Not in this universe," Cam muttered. He couldn't imagine wanting to even be president.

Lorne, Barnes, and Ronon looked at Sheppard, who gave a small hand signal.

__*__

Long, short. N. Long, long, long. O. Short, long, long. W.

 _Now_? Rodney had no idea exactly what to do, but he knew he needed to do something. The console wasn't really responding to him, so it wasn't something with the power systems. He looked at the ropes on his wrists and the guards who held the trailing ends like leashes for Rodney's hands. Okay. 

He flipped his hands around, grabbed the ropes, and pulled as hard as he could, getting the guards off balance, just as the door flew open. Rodney stood up as best he could with his waist tied to the chair, and scooted back toward the far wall, jerking on the ropes until at least one of the guards was smart enough to let go and face whatever had come through the door. The change in tension on the rope unbalanced Rodney and he and the chair ended up on their sides. 

It was Sheppard, followed by Ronon and Lorne, and the guard wasn't standing for long. Lorne took care of the other one, not looking like he moved fast, all Krav Maga and unwasted effort, and the second guard was incapacitated in less than 3 seconds. The third person in the room fired the stunner, but Ronon went low, missed by the blast and Rodney heard the noise of a fight he couldn't quite see, then the sound of a stunner blast again. 

"Nice to see you, Rodney," Sheppard said, walking into view. "Looks like we got to the party just in time. Starting your own jail break?"

"Nice to see you too, Colonel," Rodney said, trying to get the knots off his left wrist so he could get out of the chair. "But I had some warning you were on your way and provided a distraction."

"Warning?" Sheppard said, his eyes narrowing. He helped Ronon turn Rodney upright and when he was settled, Ronon moving to cut through the rope at his waist with a knife that oddly comforted and terrified Rodney at the same time. "What kind of warning?" 

"Mine," a voice said, and Rodney followed Sheppard's gaze to the door. 

Rodney had to keep his mouth from dropping open as a white and blue figure stepped in, pushing Cam Mitchell's McKay 2000 chair. It was a robot, but with a mobile face that looked oddly beautiful and hesitant, as if unsure of its welcome. When the robot spoke, the voice had timbre and lilt, and barely a trace of its mechanical origins. "The great Dr. Rodney McKay," it said, the lips moving even though there seemed to be no mouth opening behind them. "It is an honor to meet you."

__*__

Cam hadn't even known a robot _could_ gush, but the fanboy tone coming out of the robot's mouth was kind of hilarious, and he couldn't help but snicker at the shocked expression on McKay's face. 

The robot stepped around Cam's chair and extended an arm as if it meant to shake hands, but Rodney pulled his hands back when the robot reached for him. The robot reached again, and McKay leaned back, tilting the chair a bit.

"Oof," Ronon grunted as the chair banged into him. 

"It's okay, McKay," John said, walking over. 

"What is that?" McKay said, sounding interested and terrified at the same time.

"Your hologram made itself a body," Cam said. "Got us loose from the cell level."

"Okay that's entirely unexpected. Were you the one communicating in Morse?" McKay asked. 

"Yes," the Robot said.

"Don't worry," Cam said. "The other you built in the Three Laws."

"Asimov's Laws of Robotics? Of course I would do that." Free from the chair, he rose and stepped toward the robot, wariness giving way to curiosity.

"Yes," the robot said. "The you in the other reality programmed me quite thoroughly."

Sheppard stepped back from untying McKay's wrist and stepped away to give McKay room to get up. "Barnes," Sheppard said, "Find the stunner and hit them all. We don't want them coming after us."

Lorne held an Atlantis-style headset, stripped off the guards, Cam guessed, up to his ear. "Don't think they've realized we've escaped."

"You keep that," Sheppard said. "Let's get the rest of our stuff back."

Lorne handed Sheppard one of the stolen P90s and turned back to strip one guard of a stolen tac vest. Sheppard leaned over the other guard and took off a K-bar and stuck it in his waistband. Cam watched, shoving the helplessness to the back of his mind along with the pain in his face and hips, and watched Sheppard strip another unconscious guard of a stolen vest, vaguely listening to the voices of McKay and the robot. He watched Sheppard check the vest over, and then hand it out to Barnes, who slipped it on and checked his pockets. 

"Still got my tools!" Barnes said, grinning at Cam. Barnes carried special tools for the McKay 2000. "Oh! And Powerbars."

McKay turned back from the robot, snapping his fingers at Barnes. "Food. Now."

Barnes handed one to McKay and Lorne pulled two more out of the vest he'd recovered. Four bars, five people. "You all eat 'em," Cam said. He was just sitting in a chair. "I already had a snack," he said and he could tell he didn't quite keep a note of bitterness from his voice. "Got that aspirin?" 

Barnes reached into his vest and handed Cam two small pills.

"Now you need a gun," Sheppard said, handing Barnes a P90 and Cam a Wraith stunner. Sheppard paused and looked at Cam. "We'll get you out of here. See what Carson can do about..." Sheppard didn't finish the sentence, and Cam realized there was something more going on behind that resting murder face.

Fitting the weapon in his palm made Cam feel a little less helpless. He nodded, short and sharp. "Let's get out first."

Sheppard nodded back and turned away. "Okay, Robby," he said to the robot. 

"Robby?!" McKay said, turning to Sheppard. "You do not get to name my robot!" Then he turned to the robot.

"You didn't build it," John said, and asked the robot, "What's between us and the exit?"

"Many people, including guards," the robot said. 

"Can you do more than life signs?" McKay asked the robot. 

"Meropis can sense energy-based weapons."

"Any idea who's got my gun?" Ronon asked.

"Yes. It was presented to someone named Riston as a reward for capturing you."

"Where's this Riston?"

"In the control chair room, guarding the Lord Protector who is trying again to access Meropis's systems.

"We're going to have to come back for it," Sheppard said. "We need a plan to get out of here, and while I'd like to minimize loss of life, I'm not feeling particularly--" he paused and then found a word "--fastidious at the moment." Cam thought that was an understatement.

"I may not, through inaction, allow a human--"

Sheppard cut him off. "Any chance we can sneak past these people?"

"Maybe," the robot said. "I would prefer that.

"Even if we could, we can't leave without that control crystal," McKay said. "Remember, Moron, or whatever her name is, has it."

"Mara." Sheppard turned to the robot. "Can you locate her?"

"Yes. She's in a room that appears to be her personal chambers."

Lorne said, "And I'm guessing there are a lot of people between here and there."

"Yes. Eighty-three people now reside in Meropis, not including those of you from Atlantis and including the guards you have already incapacitated. I allowed them to come to harm," the robot said, voice starting to rise.

"Not permanent harm," Cam said quickly. "Just stunned."

"A diversion might be useful," Lorne said. "Then we could go get the crystal."

Sheppard looked at McKay. "Can we make something go boom?"

McKay looked at the robot. "Maybe," he said, with an odd tone in his voice. "Just a diversion, no one hurt."

 _Damn_ , thought Cam, _the robot's going to be a complication._ They were going to have to give it a job that kept it out of the way. Otherwise they were going to have to be, well, fastidious about hurting people in their escape. Cam had kept the robot out in the corridor when Sheppard and the rest had come through the door. He wasn't sure what would happen if they had to shoot. At least the stunner seemed to pass the First Law problem. Sheppard, though, was ready to kill. "We're going to have to split up, me, McKay and Robby on diversion."

"His name is not Robby," McKay said reflexively. "You don't get to name something I built."

"Different time line, different McKay. Yeah," Sheppard drawled. "Robby the robot." Hearing Sheppard needle McKay gave Cam some hope they could get through this without killing someone. "Okay, if Meropis is set up like Atlantis--"

"It is," the robot said.

Sheppard nodded. "I've got a plan."

__*__

Cam sat next to McKay and the robot in the dusty control room, earpiece in his ear. Sheppard had figured he, Barnes and Ronon would find another headset, and if they didn't, at least Cam would be able to hear the guards radioing each other when they'd started their raid on Mara's bedroom and cue the distraction. They'd already pulled the ZPM after McKay and the Robot had figured out a way to bank power for a couple of hours. The golden crystal rested in Cam's lap, glowing slightly. 

McKay and the robot were side-by-side, talking softly, ready at Cam's signal to make several power units spark spectacularly without doing real damage, the distraction that Sheppard would need.

Cam heard a shout through the earpiece, the noises of fighting and then Sheppard softly saying, "I'm here." Cam raised his hand to get McKay's attention.

"Waiting on your signal," Cam said.

"Who is this?" another voice yelled. "Orlo! Restin! Come in!"

"Here," a voice said. "What's going on?"

"Orlo!" the voice called again, panic around the edges.

"Sorry," Sheppard's voice cut in. "Orlo's a little tied up right now."

"Who is this?" the voice shouted, the panic taking over.

"Just some houseguests. Couldn't leave without saying goodbye," Sheppard drawled. Cam knew that drawl. It was the dangerous one. "Give us the crystal and no one gets hurt." There was a pause, followed by a single shot and a scream. "No one _else_ gets hurt."

"You won't get away with this!" Cam hear a woman's voice, and it sounded a bit like Mara, muffled as it was coming through Sheppard's earpiece.

"Don't you people ever get better lines?" Sheppard said.

"You'll have to take it from me!"

Cam heard Ronon's, "Okay," followed by a shriek and Sheppard saying, "Could use that diversion now."

Cam nodded to McKay and the robot, who did something at the console. Cam couldn't feel anything, but he heard more shouting and a few screams through the radio and then Sheppard barking, "Get moving, now!"

They'd plotted a straight shot out, and with the robot hooked into the city's systems, they had use of a working transporter. The robot could shunt power all over the city at will, and would stay in the power room, following their escape on the city's sensors.

"See you, Robby," Cam said.

The robot cocked its head. "I don't think I like that name." 

McKay snorted. "Good." Then he dropped the smirk and said, "Like we planned, you keep them out of this room until the power drains out and we'll be back to wake you up again as soon as we can."

"Understood, great Dr. Rodney McKay. Goodbye not-yet-President Cameron Mitchell."

Cam couldn't get used to being called something he would never be, but the thought was cut short by McKay grabbing his chair and pushing him out of the room into the corridor, down the hall to the closest transporter, Cam clamping his jaw against the pain in his hips from McKay jarring the chair in his haste. The transporter lit up and opened the moment they reached it. In the transporter they waited for the next signal from Sheppard. The two of them would re-materialize near the main gate into the Tower. Timing would be everything. Cam had the stunner and McKay a reclaimed Beretta, but McKay couldn't shoot and push at the same time. They also need to time it to arrive at the exit right before Sheppard and the others did so they could stun as many guards as possible.

Cam could hear everything through the open radio channel, the shouts and weapons fire, and Sheppard yelling, "Ronon! Damn it!" Cam's heart stopped, thinking something had happened to Ronon, but then Sheppard said, "He's not leaving without his gun. Let's go back him up."

Cam's jaw stayed locked with the tension he usually put into his legs, monitoring his breathing like the pilot he was trained to be. Eventually Sheppard said, "ETA five minutes."

"Moving in three," Cam answered, glancing up at McKay, who nodded, but he was bouncing on his toes in tension and worry. "Waiting's the worst," Cam said.

"I hate leaving the robot behind, but it's totally remote controlled by the AI in the hologram. Maybe we should bring both of them back."

"Do you really want that AI on Atlantis? It's controlling all of this city's systems. Who knows what it could do with a fully functioning and powered city."

"Hmm," McKay said. They were silent for a few moments more, and then McKay said, "That's about three."

It agreed with Cam's internal clock, so he reached up to the controls and set the destination. "Moving," he said to Sheppard. Cam wrapped one arm around the ZPM and used it to brace the stunner, ready for whatever they'd find on the other side.

"On our way. Barnes is injured."

"He just winged me," Cam heard Barnes protest. "I'm fine."

"One minute out," Sheppard said, ignoring Barnes.

Cam pressed the final control key, and the world whited out for a second, then they appeared close to the entrance used for the Tower, what was left of a pier. As soon as the door opened, they realized they were behind all the guards, and it was just too easy to pick them off with the stunner.

Sheppard, Ronon, and Barnes came running up, and Cam caught the set of Sheppard's jaw. He hadn't been sure over the radio, but looking at Sheppard he was pretty sure people were dead because of how they'd treated Cam.

"Here," Sheppard said, holding out the control crystal to Cam. "Don't say I never gave you anything." He noticed that Cam didn't have a hand free, so he reached over and tucked the crystal inside Cam's shirt, touching far more than he needed to. It sat cold, an edge digging into his ribs a contrast to the gentleness of John's hands. 

"You okay?" Cam asked.

"Better than Barnes. Bullet to the arm."

"Missed the bone," Barnes said, but Cam could see pain lines on his face. "I'll be fine."

"Can we go?" McKay said.

"We're going to have to walk to the gate, about three clicks over terrain," Sheppard said. "Can you handle it?"

Cam didn't let his fear show on his face. If jerking down the corridor had hurt, bouncing over dirt and rocks was really going to suck. Barnes's aspirin hadn't helped. "Got any pain killers in that tac vest?" he asked. Sheppard swallowed and then his mouth tightened as he started to look in the pockets.

"We need to move," Ronon said, firing back down the corridor at something Cam couldn't see.

"Rodney, Barnes, each of you take one side of Cam's chair. It'll be easier if you share. Ronon, take the rear," Sheppard said, all business.

A few moments into the walk, Sheppard handed Cam a pill and another to Barnes. "Oxy," he said. "Sorry there's no water."

Cam reached out to take them from Sheppard's hand, and John closed his fingers slightly around Cam's, the briefest touch, and Cam knew it was stupid of John, but the brief soothing over the pain was welcome. "Got used to dry swallowing in rehab. It'll be fine, thanks." He took the pill and gritted his teeth through the jostling until they kicked in and put a layer between him and his hip bones.


	9. Chapter 9

Woolsey looked grave through their immediate debriefing, his face more serious than Rodney had ever seen. Currently Markham and twenty other Marines were back on the planet guarding the stargate and securing Meropis. The city would have powered down by now without a ZedPM, using up the reserves, while the Marines moved everyone back out to the village and their small houses.

Someone had sandwiches brought to the briefing room and Rodney had scarfed down a whole one in the time it had taken Sheppard to eat half. Ronon was already on his second. They gave their stories starting with Sheppard. Lorne, then Rodney filling in, and Teyla reporting on how she and Corrigan had been tied up by former Tower guards, then locked in a hut in the village. When they were done talking, Woolsey took a breath and looked at Lorne, who put his sandwich down. "I'm very sorry to hear of Corporal Ayala's loss." 

"Thank you, sir. He died protecting others." Lorne said.

"And the bombing of Miller's team," Woolsey said to the group at large, "is an act of war." 

Woolsey paused and Rodney realized he hadn't thought of it that way at all, but it was right to think of it as war. "I think given that these people are capable of murder, kidnapping and torture, we should stop supporting them."

"Meaning?" Ronon said around a mouthful of sandwich.

Woolsey answered, so Rodney took another bite of sandwich. "We have provided this planet with agricultural advisors, political advisors to help them form a new kind of government, and health care."

"You cannot punish the villagers," Teyla said before he could go on.

"The additional city would be great to explore," Rodney said, waving part of a sandwich and scattering the thing they used for lettuce, "and Maschinenmensch has the ability to --"

"Mashy what?" Sheppard asked over the top of the sandwich he was about to bite.

"The robot with my hologram's AI. I named it after the robot in the film Metropolis. Maschinenmensch."

Sheppard swallowed the bite he'd taken. "No way are we calling it that." 

"No way are we calling it Robby."

"Gentlemen," Woolsey interrupted.

"Machina," Lorne said, giving the ch a hard k sound. 

"What?" Rodney said.

"Just machine in Latin, like _Deus ex machina_ , the god in the machine from Greek plays. I mean, it did just come out of the blue and rescue us."

Woolsey gave Lorne a measuring look. "Hadn't taken you for a fan of the actual classics."

"Machina it is," Sheppard said.

Rodney glowered for a moment and put his sandwich fragment down, but it was for form's sake. Machina worked as a name. "Fine. As I was saying, Machina could perhaps come to Atlantis with us, and the hologram could potentially stay behind in Meropis and help us learn more about her systems."

"I'm confused," Ronon said. "I thought they were the same thing and the hologram AI controlled the robot remotely?"

"Currently the AI controls the robot remotely, but the chassis was built so that the modified guts of the MALP where the program was stored could potentially fit into the torso. That way it would contained and not part of Atlantis's systems. The hologram stays in Meropis, and then we can have two of them. Almost two more of me."

"That robot was a lot less like you than the hologram," John said. "And didn't you copy the files off the original MALP?"

"Incomplete. I think there was still some code hidden." Rodney said. "As for the robot, the voice and appearance fooled you."

"Maybe. And like I said, I'm not sure how I feel about having an AI that can make the city sit up and beg."

"Asimov's Laws," Rodney nearly sang. He had found some hint of them in the code they did have. "Can't do anything to hurt us. And it knows how to recharge ZedPMs!" They had to see how important this would be.

"Please," Woolsey interrupted. "We don't need to make a decision this minute. In fact, I want potential action plans tomorrow afternoon. All of you have been off world and in duress for nearly three days. Join Mitchell and Barnes in the infirmary for check up, rest and recover, and please bring me options, fourteen hundred tomorrow."

Sheppard got up from the table, sandwich still in hand, and shot from the room. Rodney was pretty sure he was on his way to the infirmary and Cam. They could possibly be more obvious, but Rodney wasn't sure how.

__*__

Cam could hear Sheppard's voice through the haze of drugs, talking to Barnes a few beds over.

"Nice work, Marine," Sheppard, and he sounded stiff to Cam. 

"Yeah," Barnes said, sounding as loopy as Cam felt, "if getting stunned and shot is nice work, I need another job."

"Still," Sheppard said.

Barnes chuckled at him in a way Cam knew he would never do if not drugged. Cam hoped he wouldn't remember this conversation later, because privates tended to panic when they realized they'd been too familiar with a superior officer, even on a place as relaxed as Atlantis. But even through his own drug haze, Cam felt his chest seize up when Barnes said, "Go find Cam. Thanks for the CO visit, but I know why you're here."

Cam felt himself go cold. Did everyone know? He heard a few steps, and the curtain around his bed moved, but no one came in. Instead he heard Ronon from the next bay saying, "Sheppard, it's fine. C'mon." Sheppard must have shaken his head or something. "It's getting more obvious. You're... protective."

"Dr. Mitchell has mobility issues," Sheppard said stiffly, and then in a whisper that carried, just barely, to Cam's ears. "Not here, not now. Don't ask, and don't tell, remember?"

"Your military is stupid," Ronon said.

Cam heard more footsteps, then Carson's voice. "Colonel, are you all right?"

"I'm fine. Here to check on Barnes and Mitchell."

"Private Barnes'll make a full recovery, although rehabbing the muscle on his left arm will take some time. And I've just got Dr. Mitchell's scans. Was going in to see him now." The curtain at the foot of the bed was swept aside, and Carson came bustling in, John a ways behind him and Ronon leaning against the far wall as if on guard.

"Good news," Carson said. "Everything's as it was, just inflammation and nothing that looks permanent, nothing worse."

"My legs?" Cam said. He didn't want John to know how worried he was about losing the feeling in his legs again. "Gonna get'em back?" 

"I expect so, but it'll take anti-inflammatories, ice, and rest. And of course physical therapy." Carson glanced over to Sheppard. "You've got company."

Cam hated to talk to people when he was flat on his back. "He'p me up?" he asked, putting up a hand for Carson.

"You stay down, lad," Carson said with a hand on his shoulder. "No stress on your hip joints at all, not even sitting up. And I'm giving you a bit more pain medicine."

Cam scowled, but he knew the drill. Again. He felt the increase in the drug wash through him, and raised his head a bit to see Sheppard standing at the foot of the bed. "Hey, bud," Cam said, slurred in his own ears. 

"Great," John said, "everybody's on the good drugs. Just came to check on you."

"C'mere," Cam said, letting his head fall back.

"I'll leave you two alone for a bit," Carson said, reaching up to adjust the IV with his eyebrows up a fraction before walking out past John. 

A flash of _spooked_ moved over John's features, gone as fast as it started. Or maybe it was the extra something Cam was feeling. What had Carson done to his IV? Sheppard cleared his throat and said, "Glad to see you're okay."

"Rehab'll be a bitch," Cam said. "C'mere." Sheppard walked all the way to the side of the bed, his hands dangling at his sides, and Cam could see them twitching, like John wanted to do something but was holding back. Cam reached up a hand, hoping John would take it. "You killed some of 'em for hurting me, didn'tcha?" John just nodded, grave and contained and looking to Cam like the most beautiful and deadly thing he'd ever seen. "Never had anyone love me like that." 

The last part came out clearer than the rest, and Cam saw John freeze. Only Ronon was anywhere near enough to hear, and John glanced over at him. Ronon was smirking, which made Cam amused. John looked back at Cam, who gave him a lazy smile and closed his eyes. John could freak out about the word _love_ later. They were safe enough here with Ronon on watch. 

Cam felt a light touch on his cheek, catching on the scruff of a two-day beard but feeling very warm against his face. Cam reached up and took John's hand, letting sense images wash over him, remembering the warmth of John's ankles when he put his feet in Cam's lap, the heat that trailed behind as John swept fingers down Cam's ribs, the feel of John's hair under his hand as Cam pulled him down for a kiss.

The last wasn't memory, it was now, and Cam had enough sense to change course, putting their foreheads together, their breath mingling. Cam said, "You smell like turkey."

"Had a sandwich," John said, not moving his head as Cam's fingers ruffled up through John's hair.

"Need a shower," Cam said. "So do I."

"Been off world and imprisoned for a few days," John said. "So were you."

"Naw, I'm fresh as a daisy," Cam said, and then he dropped his voice to a whisper. "McKay knows." 

"So does Ronon," John breathed back, the whisper sounding like it was throttled, "and probably everybody else."

"We still gonna try to stay on the QT?" Cam didn't open his eyes to see if he could tell what John was thinking.

"Not asking. Not telling," John choked out. "I love my job."

"More'n me," Cam said, not making it a question.

Cam's fingers tightened in John's hair when he shifted to stand up. Cam wanted this moment. Then after a few breaths John shook his head against Cam's where their foreheads still touched. "No," he said, and Cam's chest started to feel like his heart was growing. "No," John said again. "Please help me have both. Not more than. No."

Cam was still for a moment, the wash of drugs taking his feelings and swirling them around. He started chuckling, turning their forehead touch into a series of head bangs. John reached up and took Cam's hand from his hair and stood back, keeping Cam's hand in his. "What's so funny?"

He managed to keep his voice down. "Best backasswards declaration o'love I ever heard."

"There's no way you're going to remember this when you're off the drugs."

"You'll just have to remind me," Cam said, but hoped his brain would file it away.

"Sure," John said, and Cam heard Ronon cleared his throat. Cam had forgotten he was there. He glanced over and Ronon indicated with his chin that someone was coming. John put Cam's hand down onto his chest, touched his face and stood back. "Sleep it off, buddy," he said.

"Will dooo," Cam half sang. "I dooo. Will yoou. Doobie doobie doo."

"Yep, the good drugs," John said, and walked away. "See you when you're sober."

Cam heard Ronon say, "You okay?"

"Yeah." Cam heard Sheppard sigh. "Just don't say anything, okay?"

"Pretty much everyone knows. Don't think anyone cares."

"Somebody's going to care," John said.


	10. Chapter 10

Rodney rushed into the staff meeting, a few minutes late, laptop in hand. Woolsey had called an extra meeting after some transmission from the SGC. Some new stupid regulation announcement, Rodney thought, but while everyone was there, he could try to bring up Machina again. It had been a week since they got back from Meropis, and if he couldn't bring the AI to Atlantis, he wanted to go study it. 

The rest of the staff were already assembled, Beckett smiling in welcome, a nod from Lorne, Teyla's warm hello, and Sheppard sitting up a little too straight. Woolsey finally looked up from his laptop and from the look on his face, Rodney wondered what bad news had come in with last night's data burst from the SGC. He could have hacked into it, but usually it was boring politics. Better Woolsey dealing with the IOA's special brand of idiocy. He half expected some dire announcement, but Woolsey said, "Good morning. Shall we start with status reports?"

Rodney looked up. "I want to bring Machina to the city to re-organize the Ancient database along the lines of Meropis. We can't find the programs for drone manufacture, growing control crystals. If we could run those manufacturing facilities, we could re-supply our weapons, even re-stock the facility in Antarctica."

Sheppard sat up. "I thought we agreed to keep the AI out of the city."

"For now," Rodney said, glaring over. "But if it can undo the sabotage the Ancients did on the file systems, we'd be in much better shape. And Meropis has the files for how to recharge ZedPMs, Machina told me. I want to at least go back and copy everything we can."

"We need to bring back the Marines that are there," John said. "We can't guard the Tower indefinitely."

"With the AI there and powered up, you don't need them," Rodney said. "It won't let the Lord Protector or anyone who isn't us interface with the city."

"Which is exactly why I don't want it on this city," Sheppard said. "It could lock us out if it wanted." He and Rodney had been arguing this all week.

"Mitchell's been looking at a code image he made of part of the hologram from the original MALP. That other me put in fail safes besides the Three Laws."

"Remind me of these laws again," Woolsey said.

Rodney answered, enumerating the laws with raised fingers, comfortable in lecture mode. "From science fiction, Isaac Asimov's robot stories. First Law, a robot may not injure a human being or, through inaction, allow a human being to come to harm. Second Law, a robot must obey the orders given it by human beings except where such orders would conflict with the First Law. Third Law, a robot must protect its own existence as long as such protection does not conflict with the First or Second Laws."

"We were able to get around those by sending it where it couldn't see us, uh, harming other human beings," Sheppard said. "Pretty simple workaround. It knew what we were going to do."

"Colonel," Lorne said slowly, "wasn't that AI originally focused on saving you? Maybe that's its Zeroth Law."

"Zeroth law?" Teyla asked.

"A law before the First Law," Rodney said, mental gears clicking at the idea. 

"If it focused on protecting me," Sheppard started, but McKay kept talking. 

"If we understand the motivations put into the AI's program, we can figure out how to use it without it interfering. I'd like to go back and fire up the hologram. Lots to learn. And I'll see what files I can download," McKay said, turning to Woolsey. "If we could make our own drones and control crystals, not to mention recharging ZedPMs without folding space…" He trailed off, looking at Woolsey, hoping to bring him around.

Woolsey looked over at Sheppard. Rodney knew how much Cam wanted to do the research, and wondered how much he'd been bugging Sheppard about going back. And when it came to decisions about whether the AI was safe to ever bring to Atlantis, Sheppard would probably trust Cam to be more careful than Rodney. After a moment, Sheppard shrugged. "Better over there than here in Atlantis."

"For now," Rodney said pointedly.

"Other updates?" Woolsey said. "Dr. Beckett?"

"Ah, Private Barnes will make a full recovery, as will Dr. Mitchell. He already has sensation back in some parts of his legs."

Rodney glanced to see how Sheppard took the news, and he was nodding slightly.

"Teyla?" Woolsey asked. "What news about the villagers?

"When Dr. Corrigan and I were with the villagers, they seemed very eager to learn, particularly mathematics and biology. They were also surprised that we could do reasonable weather predictions, given enough information. They would like us to provide teachers." She held up a hand before Woolsey could raise an objection. "I did my best to manage their expectations." She said the phrase with an irony Rodney understood. It was one of Woolsey's favorites when it came to almost anything involving people. 

"The hologram could teach them," Rodney said. "We could set up a few more projectors and it could teach any subject in the data banks. Including how to read Ancient."

Teyla took a soft breath. "We could rebuild the knowledge of the Ancestors."

"If they rebuild the technology, the Wraith will just destroy them," Lorne said.

"If only the city is on line, and if we give it even one ZedPM permanently, it will be able to cloak," Rodney said. 

"Like an invisible Library of Alexandria," Woolsey said softly.

"For all of Pegasus," Teyla said, and Rodney could see her having a vision of what that knowledge could mean for the galaxy.

"And my AI can make that happen. And if we can charge ZedPMs..."

Sheppard cleared his throat. "We know how they charged ZedPMs. We blew it up, remember? That place of folded space near our last planet with the facility inside?"

"No, no, no, no, no, of _course_ I asked Machina about that. We'd have to do it on a much smaller scale, but it can be done. That place was a research lab that charged ZedPMs as a side project. The way Machina said they normally did it would be slower, sure, but--"

"Okay," Sheppard interrupted. "Baby steps. Let's go back and talk to the AI. Maybe it doesn't even want to teach primitives if it was based on the great Dr. Rodney McKay."

Rodney shot him a glare. He'd been hearing that phrase for the last few days. At first it felt ironic, then flattering, and now it just annoyed him. "Let's talk to it. Look into its programming. Get files. Are we going or not?"

Woolsey looked around the room. "I have trouble resisting your ideas--both Teyla's vision for Pegasus and Dr. McKay's arguments about bringing more of Atlantis and her sister city on line. There are ethical issues to consider, however."

Teyla tilted her head. "Ethical issues," she said, as if musing. "Indeed."

Sheppard looked over at Carson. "When will Dr. Mitchell be ready to go off world again?" He cleared his throat and added, "He's our best computer scientist."

"Two weeks minimum," Carson said. 

"Prep mission in the next two days, scheduling a full mission for three weeks from now?" Sheppard said.

"Three weeks?" Rodney didn't whine, but it was a near thing.

"The other city isn't going anywhere, Rodney," Sheppard said. "And I want Mitchell's eyes on that code."

"If there's nothing else?" Woolsey said, glancing around. Rodney looked at him. This was a very fast meeting by Woolsey standards. No one said anything, so Woolsey nodded and stood, everyone else made to leave, Sheppard waiting for Rodney to finish packing up his laptop. As they turned to go, Woolsey called, "Colonel Sheppard. A moment." Sheppard turned back and waited by the door. "Please," Woolsey said, gesturing to the chair Sheppard had just left.

Sheppard glanced over, mouth grim. "Catch you later, McKay."

There was nothing Rodney could do right then but leave, but the next thing on his agenda would be hacking into that transmission.

__*__

They were prepared to stay in Meropis for several days. Cam wasn't exactly looking forward to camping, but they'd found a bedroom with a fairly high bed, or so he'd been told. He wondered if they were putting him in the Lord Protector's former chambers. 

The swelling had gone completely from his face, and although he had most of the sensation in his legs again and could stand if he needed to again, only the fact that they could use transporters would make it possible for him to return to Meropis. Sheppard had assigned him a new mobility assistant--the word Sheppard used, stiff and not meeting Cam's eyes--as Barnes recovered. 

Sheppard was with them for now, but wouldn't be staying. He'd been an absolute bitch for the last three weeks, avoiding Cam and retreating behind his protective walls. It was like when Cam had first come to Atlantis, and Sheppard hadn't been able to figure out then what he wanted from Cam. No, this was worse. He treated Cam like he barely knew him. Cam wondered if something had happened while Carson had him hopped up on painkillers.

He put the thoughts aside as they moved through the city. McKay took the long way to the power room to interact with Machina and bring the power back on line. This time they'd swapped ATA carriers, Sheppard with McKay and Lorne with Cam. The way Sheppard was behaving, Cam didn't mind. Once the transporters were up, Cam transported down to the holograph room, turning his own wheels down the corridor before the new guy could try to grab his chair. 

"You all set down there?" Lorne radioed to Sheppard.

"Almost," McKay snapped back in Cam's earpiece. "Couple of minutes. Ran into a slight complication, but we're almost resolved."

"Machina still there?" Lorne asked

"Yep," Cam heard McKay say. "Just like we left it. Give us a few minutes."

Cam rolled into the holograph room. The guts from the old MALP were still in place and still connected to Meropis's systems. Cam needed to reconnect his laptop. "All good," he radioed. "I need at least five." He made the necessary connections, Lorne and Cam's new aid, a quiet Marine named Smalls, who was about half again bigger than Barnes, holding a light for him. "Okay, go."

The lights came up and Cam nodded to Lorne, who initiated the hologram from the console.

The hologram of the old McKay greeted them. "So glad you're back, not-yet-President Cameron Mitchell. We have so much to do. This is terrific. I can talk with the great Dr. Rodney McKay through my external interface and work with you here at the same time."

The President thing bugged him, but he latched on to the last thing. "External interface," Cam said. "About that. We named it Machina."

"Machina?"

Cam looked to Lorne to explain, since Lorne had named it. "Like the god in the machine from Greek plays. _Deus ex machina_. Comes in at the end and solves all the problems."

The lined face of the hologram relaxed dismissively. "That's not the kind of thing the great Dr. Rodney McKay put in my database. But it sounds a bit like machine, and it did rescue you, so I suppose will do. It's my machine for moving about the city. And saving the day." it said, that last bit sounding pure McKay.

"How did you build it?" Lorne asked.

"When you put in the ZedPM, Meropis had many more systems available, and I used one of the manufacturing facilities. I wanted my interface to be pleasing. I've only seen it through sensors, and I don't really have a sense of esthetics. Did I do all right?" The hologram looked hopeful.

Cam blinked. None of this was what he had expected, and certainly not a McKay-like insecurity. "Yeah, you did good."

"And I was able to solve the problem of your escape by building a physical form, not-yet-General Evan Lorne."

Lorne said, "What?"

"In my future you are a general and head of the SGC."

"Okay," Cam said. "While we're talking about names, can you maybe just call us Lorne and Mitchell. Or if you need titles, Major Lorne and Dr. Mitchell?"

"That'd be great," Lorne agreed, "and you can shorten it just to Dr. McKay."

"Ah, yes, well, _the great_ is understood implicitly, I suppose," the hologram said, "and Colonel Sheppard is telling me the same thing. See? I left off the John from his name. I can learn." The hologram looked pleased.

"So, let's just let you run while I look at your code."

"I just stand here?"

"Tell you what, can you focus on Machina for now?" Cam asked. "Talk with McKay."

"You won't change anything?" the hologram asked. "I can't have you mucking about with your boneheaded military mind into the, into Dr. McKay's code." Then it interrupted itself again. "You said Dr. Mitchell. You are not in uniform. You are no longer in the military?"

"Doctorate in computer science, specialist in Ancient systems, and really admiring your code. Relax. Just want to take a look. Now just stand there. Sorry, guys, but this is gonna be boring for you."


	11. Chapter 11

Machina stood in the power room without a visible face, but someone had dressed it in a tattered uniform. Rodney appreciated the gesture, maybe, but he wasn't sure how the shoulders had been so artfully torn. One could never tell with Marines. Maybe it had been ripped, and they wanted it to be symmetrical. The blank face was strange, and Rodney realized the front of the head was a sophisticated holoscreen. The robot looked empty without the large eyes and mobile mouth. 

Sheppard interrupted his thoughts. "You ready yet, McKay?" he snapped.

"You know," Rodney said, "you typically only use that tone in life or death situations. What's made you such a-- Why have you been so snappy? I mean, if I can notice it..." Sheppard didn't say anything. Rodney knew Sheppard hated being transparent, but a lot of his old walls had come down in the last eighteen months. Since not long after Mitchell arrived. Rodney didn't really wait for an answer. "Was it whatever Woolsey called you back about?"

There was a very long pause. Rodney didn't look at Sheppard because that would spook him back into his hole. He should probably tell Sheppard he already knew what it was, but he'd learned a thing or two over the years, and it would be better if Sheppard told him. Finally, Sheppard breathed out and said, "Yeah." 

"Yeah, you've been snappy or yeah it was about what Woolsey said."

"Both," Sheppard said. Rodney dared a glance up, but Sheppard wasn't looking at him as he took a breath. "Someone reported me to the brass under DADT."

Even though he already knew, Rodney felt the heat rise in his face in the time it took him to take a breath. He was so angry about this, but instead of yelling he said coldly, "When we get back to Atlantis, I'll be able to tell you who it was in ten minutes or less." Again, he already knew it was Selker, and everyone knew what his problem was with the Colonel. Sheppard had assigned him to work with Kavanaugh and on the sewerage project because of the whole illicit still thing and Selker turning on the Marine who'd been his partner. Rodney had additionally made sure the temperature controls hadn't worked well for Selker's last few showers.

"That's not the point, McKay." 

"Ronon would just grunt and say, _Screw 'em_." 

"The point is I may be removed from command. Woolsey said he was going to try something. I don't know."

Rodney pulled the ZPM from its carry case and held it out to admire it and to give himself something to do. "We haven't sent a ZedPM back to earth yet. We could make them keep you here, if they want all the new toys we'll be making when we get a better handle on Atlantis's manufacturing systems, which my hologram will help us do."

Sheppard said, "What if I resigned?" 

The idea shocked Rodney. "What?"

"What if I stayed in Atlantis as a civilian?" Sheppard looked around. "Or I could take over here in Meropis and help mine the database." 

"No, no, no, no, no! You are not saddling me with some new jarhead to break in!" Rodney clutched the ZPM back to his chest. 

"Rodney," Sheppard said, "I don't know what to do."

"You and Mitchell," Rodney said. "Not a secret. Not for months. Mostly people are happy for you."

"Mostly. Someone wasn't."

"And I will find out who, but that's not the point. If they try to replace you with someone we don't know and trust, most of the science team will revolt."

"You can't know that."

"Yes, I can. We had a feeling this was coming." Rodney frowned. "It's already been discussed."

Sheppard looked surprised. "Why?"

Rodney gave him one of the stares he usually reserved for morons. "Because we've all read all the files that the hologram included, and it's all AARs and reports from my, or another me's, point of view. And we've seen you in action over the last five years. And your stupid military is stupid. I could get you a commission in the Canadian forces." It was quite a speech, delivered with a vehemence that left Sheppard blinking, but Rodney wasn't done. "We're scientists. We make observations and extrapolations. Since that MALP showed up, the favorite drinking game has been to come up with ways we would have survived without you, scenario by scenario, and the answer is, we probably wouldn't have."

Sheppard looked stunned. "Someone else with more command experience might have kept us out of some of the trouble I caused," he started. Just then their earpieces crackled to life. 

"You all set down there?" Lorne said.

"Almost," McKay snapped back, looking at John. "Couple of minutes. Ran into a slight complication, but we're almost resolved."

"What's to resolve?" Sheppard said.

"You do nothing. Go on as usual. And that means talking to Cam like you used to. Everyone thinks you broke up, and they're not sure who to be mad at, but right now it's mostly you. Cam is covering _manfully_ ," Rodney snorted. "But when no one is looking he looks like someone kicked his puppy."

"Machina still there?" Lorne radioed.

"Yep," Sheppard said, seemingly grateful for the interruption and glancing over at the robot's blank face. "Powered down just like we left it. Give us a few minutes."

Rodney had turned to slot in the ZPM, twisting it into place and then moving to a console, his fingers hesitating. "Just, sit tight on this. I'll talk to Woolsey. We'll fix this." With that he put his fingers to the console, and in moments they had lights followed by a slight whirring as the robot stood away from where it leaned against the wall. 

The face came into focus as it turned its head and methodically tested its joints. 

"Machina," it said. "Major Lorne told me the name. That will suit me. Dr. Mitchell has requested that I focus my attention on interacting with you." It tilted its head as if looking down at itself. "Are you more comfortable with me clothed?"

"Maybe." 

"Take advantage of the situation," Rodney said to Sheppard. "Mitchell will look at the code side of things over the next few days. In the mean time, you could question the AI. Find out how it would respond to tactical scenarios if we bring it back to Atlantis, and Atlantis fell under attack." It would keep Sheppard busy while Rodney started combing through Meropis's file structures.

Sheppard nodded, found a chair, sat and stuck his legs out, settling his folded hands across his stomach, and Rodney half-listened while Sheppard did what he did best. Third best, after flying and blowing shit up. Strategy and tactics.

"Let's talk about the Laws of Robotics," Sheppard said, "and how that might play out in different circumstances."

__*__

Cam rolled through the event horizon back into Atlantis's gate room, following a bunch of Marines with camping gear. He couldn't wait to sleep in his own bed. That thought brought the images he had been trying to put out of his mind over the past few days, of Sheppard in his bed, of Sheppard comfortable enough to put his feet in Cam's lap. Sheppard had left Meropis on schedule that first day without swinging by to say goodbye to Cam. Between that and weeks of avoidance and snappishness, Cam was pretty sure they were done. Nice while it lasted. Maybe he could get the friendship back. Eventually. 

Woolsey was on the balcony. "Welcome home. Debrief in two hours," he said. No smile. Something was going on.

Cam saw McKay out of the corner of his eye, making a beeline to Medical. Cam turned his path to arc by Chuck. "Thanks for dialing in Radek every day." He nodded up toward the balcony. "Things been like this all week?"

Chuck nodded. "The last few weeks. Lots of microbursts of communication between here and Milky Way. Woolsey's arguing with the SGC and the IOA, I think. Sheppard's been off. He usually checks in with me every day when there are teams off world. It's like he thinks I have some telepathic link with the gate. But not this time."

"Huh." That was weird. John _always_ knew what was going on with the off-world teams, as much as anyone could from a distance. It had always made him feel looked out for when he went out with someone other than AR1. Now he felt like they'd been abandoned, even though they were back. 

"Something happen with you two?" Chuck asked.

Cam felt his chest freeze, and then took a breath to center himself. That was the last question he expected, but maybe if McKay had figured them out, Chuck had, too. Hell, probably everyone had. He decided to answer honestly. "Dunno." He swallowed. "That the gossip?"

"Bigger gossip is about Sergeant Selker."

Cam remembered the story, the guy with the still who threw his partner under the bus. "What happened to Selker?" Cam asked.

"You know he has the gene, right? Which is why the brass puts up with him. The city hates him, now. Doors only open half way, and he can't get a warm shower. A transporter put him out on the far side of the city, Sector Four, and then shut down. He had to walk back, missed a platoon training and got disciplined for real."

Cam had never heard of the city getting personal. "Any idea why?"

Chuck looked around. The rest of the Meropis team was through the gate and sorting materiel for inspection and return to stores. No one paid attention to them. "He had some things to say about the Colonel. Said he was going to report him."

"For what?" Cam asked, but Chuck just gave him a significant look and shook his head, turning to Amanda, who had come to take over for the evening shift.

__*__

Rodney was glad of the time to shower after the usual waste of time in medical. A few days in Meropis was okay, but she showed every bit of the years of neglect. If they were going to be able to use her, they needed an army with brooms and mops. He wasn't sure she still had the little robots that kept Atlantis clean. And as much as Rodney complained about working on plumbing, they were gong to need that, too. It was good to be back on Atlantis, and it reminded him of what Meropis had been and could be.

Having a second city! What that wouldn't do in their fight against the Wraith. Especially if he was right and they could start making drones, maybe even more puddle jumpers. Or even their own ships! But that would require a large workforce, and the Wraith would destroy any rising technology. But Teyla's idea of creating a university--she didn't call it that, but that's what it was--could solve the technical issues, if people beaten into the stone age on a regular basis could grasp the level of maths they'd need. If they could train people, build shipyards, repair other Ancient outposts with the right parts, not their workarounds... And Machina was excited by these ideas. Their conversations had been illuminating, and Rodney was relieved to be able to talk with the robot interface and not the hologram. He'd seen it once, and couldn't handle looking at himself in thirty to forty years.

He dried himself and checked the time. He had twenty minutes before debrief, time enough to grab coffee and a snack. Maybe the commissary had made more of those cookies.

He saw Sheppard having the same idea, filling a cup with the coffee they no longer had to ration and chatting with Kim the baker, but awkwardly, not his normal flirting. He joined them, demanding, "Cookies!" At her skeptical face he tried begging. "I've been off world most of a week eating MREs."

"You like MREs, Rodney," Sheppard said.

"But they don't have cookies like these!" Rodney wheedled.

Kim shook her head and handed over a cookie each, three inches across and smelling like clove and molasses, even though that wasn't exactly what Pegasus offered up for spices. "Finish those before you get to your meeting," she said, "or they'll march down here after for their own share."

Rodney thanked her and turned with Sheppard toward the door, juggling coffee in one hand and cookie in the other. "Everything okay here?" he asked Sheppard. Sheppard shrugged and gestured toward his mouth, conveniently full of cookie, so Rodney took a bite of his own to wait him out. 

Swallowing, Sheppard nodded. "Fine." He took another bite. 

Rodney glanced around. No one was in earshot, but even so, he kept his voice low. "Look, I was just trying to let Cam know we had your back on you and, you know, him. I didn't mean for you to walk away from it."

Sheppard shot him a glare that had more venom than Rodney would have expected. Sheppard took a sip of coffee to wash down the cookie in his mouth. Only after they entered the transporter he said, "They've opened an investigation based on local allegations, but right now it's just SGC personnel involved. They haven't moved it up to general Air Force discipline, yet."

"Are they really that stupid?"

Sheppard nodded, looking grim. 

"So is this meeting about...?" Rodney asked, the combination of cookie and coffee no longer happy in his stomach.

Sheppard shook his head. "This is just about what you found on Meropis and whether we bring a version of the AI back to Atlantis."

By this point they had entered the gate room and started up the stairs to Woolsey's office. "Okay," McKay said. "I will ruin all of them."

"No," Sheppard said, "and cut the harassment of Selker. It's not gonna help my case."

"We'll see about that," Rodney muttered. No way was he letting them cashier Sheppard on DADT. If Sheppard left, Mitchell would, too, and that was also unacceptable.


	12. Chapter 12

Cam looked up from the laptop he was sharing with Radek when Sheppard and McKay entered the conference room. Teyla was already seated next to Lorne. Sheppard sat next to Woolsey, and McKay settled on the other side of Cam, looking over his shoulder to see what was on the laptop. Cam turned it, pleased to see McKay nod.

"Welcome back, Dr. Mitchell, Major Lorne," Woolsey said. "Can you summarize your findings about Meropis and the AI built by the alternate Dr. Mckay?" Then he muttered, "Yet another sentence I never thought I'd say." 

Cam covered a smile. The phrase had become like a verbal tic for Woolsey.

McKay said, "The code is elegant, of course because another me wrote it, and I preliminarily agree with Dr. Mitchell's findings."

"Meaning?"

Cam said, "It has the classic Asimov three laws built in, so I don't think it could harm us even if it took over the city here like it has in Meropis. I agree with Colonel Sheppard about not bringing it back to Atlantis, which I'm sure he'll explain." He glanced at Sheppard, who was wearing officer face. "That said, the AI did spend forty-five thousand years or so untangling all the damage done by the Ancients when they left Atlantis. On that other Atlantis." Cam shook his head. Parallel realities brought a need for grammatical structures English didn't really have. "Damage to the file structures, that is. I'd like to bring back a partial version, like a file butler--"

"Ask Jeeves!" McKay butted in. "Better interface than Gopher." Cam snorted at the expressions around the table. Only Radek caught the references to pre-Google internet searches, smirking before he spoke up.

"If we cannot rebuild the file structures back to the elegance we found on Meropis," Radek said, "we might at least be able to build an interface that will use what the AI learned to help us search. I looked over the information available in the second city. What we cannot find there due to damage and time, we should be able to unearth here."

Sheppard nodded. "I like this idea better than bringing the whole thing back. My take on Machina is that it might have some problems at humans shooting other humans, even in self-defense. If we had an invasion here, it might have trouble not interfering." Cam said, "It knows there were human deaths from when we escaped. It decided to prioritize us."

"But you can bring part of it back to help with file searches," Woolsey said. "Both Machina and the AI should stay on Meropis."

"Since they're one and the same now," Cam said, happy that the meeting was going his way. He'd been worried Sheppard would shut down his ideas out of hand. "McKay originally thought we could clone the AI, but it doesn't look like it would work well."

"Longer term," Teyla said, speaking at last, "can we plan for Meropis to benefit all of Pegasus? With the AI as a guardian, it could not be misused."

Woolsey cleared his throat. "The IOA has other ideas."

Teyla stared at him. "They should not have a say."

"That may be a discussion for another time," Woolsey began, clearly uncomfortable.

Cam raised a hand and waited for Woolsey's nod before he spoke. No one was going to like this part. "I don't think we get to make the decisions." 

Everyone turned to face Cam, but it was Lorne who continued. "Machina has changed since we first initiated the hologram, even since you talked to it, Colonel. It has a lot more agency than it did. I've spent a lot of time talking with it, following up on Colonel Sheppard's conversations, and the longer it's awake and mobile, the more it seems..." he paused and tilted his head, the closest he would come to a shrug in uniform. "It seems like a person. It's learning and growing and has started to express wants and needs. It decided to prioritize us, but I couldn't guarantee it would do so again." 

"What?" McKay said. "You didn't mention any of this."

"I didn't know what you'd seen in the code, and I didn't want to influence your analysis." And that was God's own truth, even though Machina had suggested it to Cam and Lorne. If Lorne had a good report from conversations with the machine and Cam and Zelenka came to similar conclusions from a different angle, backed up by McKay, then Cam felt they'd be able to trust the AI. Lorne said, "It says it's operating by five laws."

McKay wrestled Cam for the laptop. "I don't see it."

"The code we're looking at isn't the code it's running now, probably," Cam said. "It was limited to the physical constraints of the original box the other McKay built and the other Sheppard loaded into the MALP. Interfaced with Meropis, it had room to grow. Atlantis has an AI, but not a personality. Meropis was too badly damaged for the AI to really function. With the hologram programming, it's kind of a person."

Sheppard turned to Lorne. "And it's added laws to its programming?

"What did it say they were?" McKay asked.

Lorne said, "The Zeroth Law wasn't about saving Sheppard. Saving Sheppard was the means to saving all humans from the threat in that time line. From Michael."

"A robot may not harm _humanity_ , not just a single human, or through inaction allow humanity to come to harm" Radek said. "That it?"

"Essentially, yes," Lorne said. "The Fourth Law is about supporting humanity's growth. All the stuff Teyla wants to do, what we want to do, both of those are in line with the Zeroth and Fourth Laws. Machina's on board."

"And the IOA has little say over a sentient AI built by someone from another reality," Sheppard said slowly, putting the pieces together. He leaned back, looking amused. "I vote Teyla queen of Meropis, with Machina as First Minister."

__*__

Cam moved his crutches from the sling on Beulah to help him stand next to his bed, then transferred from the chair to his bed. Everything still hurt more than he'd gotten used to, but at least he could bend over to run Man O'War again. Not that Sheppard had invited him running in the morning. Cam shoved Beulah with his foot so she rolled a few feet away and he'd have to walk to it in the morning. If he gave in and got lazy, he wouldn't get it back. 

When the meeting broke up, Sheppard had shot out like a rocket, not looking at Cam, and he'd been nowhere to be seen at dinner. Cam shifted on the bed and reached for his book. Even though they'd given him one of the bedrooms in the posh part of the Tower, the mattresses were stuffed straw. It felt like heaven to sit propped up in his own bed and read. How perspective changed. He'd hated having to read in a bed during rehab. 

A couple of pages in, his door chimed. He sighed. Another thing left over from rehab was that he hated having people see him in bed. "Who is it?"

"Sheppard."

That was unexpected. "Come in," Cam said, wondering what he was in for.

Sheppard opened the door and stepped in, nodding for some reason when he saw Cam in bed. He walked over and sat by Cam's feet, hands clasped between his knees, looking intently at the floor. Cam let him sit for a bit, sorting through his own feelings. Something had happened after they got back from that first trip to Meropis, or when they were there. Cam wasn't sure. He vaguely remembered Sheppard coming by the infirmary once, but Cam had been on the serious drugs. Sheppard hadn't come by at all after that, and had avoided Cam ever since, snappy and cold to pretty much everyone as far as Cam could see. 

And Cam wasn't stupid. He could guess what kind of comments Chuck was referring to when it came to Sergeant Selker. 

Sheppard said suddenly. "I knew this was coming, but..."

"What was coming?"

"I'm up on DADT." John still didn't look up from the floor.

"Selker," Cam said. "He's the one, isn't he?" He felt numb. This explained why John had backed off so hard.

John nodded without looking up, and pinched the bridge of his nose. "I guess we weren't as careful as we should have been."

Cam appreciated that John didn't blame him. John was the one with the protectiveness problem. "What do you want to do?"

"They'll send me home. They'll kick me out."

Cam felt a deep pang of sympathy in his chest and then anger at Selker. Cam had lost his military career from injury, but it didn't mean the adjustment hadn't been hard. To have it ripped away by an asshole? Cam didn't think showing his anger would help John, so he took a breath and calmed himself. "What do you want?"

"Everything I have right now. Or that we, you know... had," he said, finally glancing over to Cam. "If I haven't screwed that up, too." His face was as naked as Cam had ever seen it, a flash of pain and longing he'd never seen on John, gone in an instant when he turned back to staring at the floor. "I want both," he said, "like I told you in the Infirmary."

Cam wanted to touch John, but he was just out of reach, so he moved his leg to run his shin against John's hips through the covers. "Hate to tell you I don't remember that much about the one time you came to see me. Carson was a little heavy on the morphine. Not that I minded. What did I say?"

"Well, you sang at me," Sheppard glanced up, a spark of amusement under the worry.

"Oh dear god," Cam said. "What else?"

Sheppard looked back down. "You're right, I would kill anyone that hurt you. I did. I have."

"I said that?"

Sheppard nodded, eyes down. "And I want my career, being here," she said, opening his hands to indicate Atlantis. "And being _here_ ," he said, glancing at Cam and away again.

So that was the crux of it all, and this was the biggest declaration he could ever expect from John that they'd moved from friends with benefits to something much, much deeper. Cam looked at Sheppard, the lines of tension along his back and the white along the knuckles where he had clasped his hands together again. "I ain't going nowhere," he said. 

"But what if I have to?"

"What, leave?"

John nodded without speaking. 

"Solution's staring you in the face," Cam said, feeling reckless. "Well, it would be if you'd just look up."

"What do you mean?" John said, looking at him, his face the mask Cam knew from the few _we're not having any kind of emotional conversation so don't even start_ moments over the last year and a half.

Cam felt like he was in the cockpit, pulling up on the yoke, taking his F302 up toward the atmosphere as fast as it would go. "Resign your commission. Marry me. I can have a spouse on Atlantis if they have relevant technical skills. Standard contract. Or we can totally defect and help Teyla set up Meropis."

John didn't move for a long moment, blinking only once. Cam felt himself sinking, feeling like he'd over done it. Finally John said, "Shove over," as he lay down beside Cam, head on his chest, boots hanging off the footboard. Cam put the book on the floor and rested one of his hands on John's head, carding his fingers through his hair, not sure how to interpret this gesture. They'd been in this position before, but usually both naked, sated. "Never thought anything would be more important than serving," John said.

So that was it. "More ways to serve than in the Air Force," Cam said. "Why do you think I did everything I could to make sure I stayed in the SGC?" He made his voice light and self deprecating. "Even if it meant turning into a geek?" Cam could feel the soft huff of John's breath in quiet laughter. "There's more'n one way to serve."

"Maybe."

"Y'know," Cam said, letting that metaphorical 302 dive back into the atmosphere. "I think I figured out the laws of a certain John Sheppard."

"Yeah?" John said, settling his hand on Cam's hip.

"First one's easy. Thou shalt not discuss emotions." He felt John's fingers tense on his hip, and then suddenly relax with another silent huff of laughter. "Second one? Though shalt not fuck with Sheppard's people on pain of death." John's head nodded against Cam's chest. Yeah, that one was easy. He wasn't sure how John would react to the next one. "Third law: Sheppard is second, the world is first. What Sheppard wants doesn't matter."

"Except it does now," John said immediately. He pushed himself up on his elbow to look at Cam, but he didn't say anything. He looked like he wanted to, but couldn't. 

Cam pushed John's head back down onto his chest, feeling suddenly level and settled. "You don't have to violate the First Law of Sheppards." John relaxed against him. "We'll figure it out. You go back, I go back. You stay, I stay."

They lay together for a while and Cam started to drift off, brought suddenly to wakefulness when John cleared his throat and said, "So."

"So what?"

"Rodney's advice has been to just forget about it, keep doing what I do."

"You think he's up to something?" Cam asked.

"You think he's not?" 

"So what if he manages to preserve your career?" Cam asked.

There was a long pause, and Cam continued to card his fingers through John's ridiculous hair. "Maybe..." Cam felt John swallow before he said, "What do _you_ want?"

Cam blinked, his breath halting for a moment. He really hadn't considered it. Until he'd said it a moment ago, it hadn't even entered his mind, but the idea of helping re-build Meropis, creating something for all of Pegasus, not just Earth or just the IOA? And something of his loyalty to the Air Force had cracked if they were going to take a successful commander like Sheppard out of a high-risk environment like Atlantis just because he and Cam had a thing going on.

"I like building new things," Cam said carefully. Let Sheppard take that as he would--building a new relationship with John, building the new file structures for Atlantis, or building a university in Meropis.

"I don't think I've done enough of that," John said, sitting up. Cam wasn't sure what would happen next, but John just unlaced his boots and pulled off his BDU blouse while kicking them off, then putting his watch on Cam's night stand. He lay back down in his Tshirt, trousers and socks, head on Cam's chest again. Cam turned off the lamp and wrapped an arm around John, who seemed to already be asleep. Nothing had been decided and yet it felt like everything was settled.


	13. Epilogue

Jack O'Neill looked down at the swath of green. At his request, they let him pilot the gate ship from Atlantis to Meropis. He'd taken the little ship high, looking over the land around the planet's star gate. "I can't see anything," he said.

"You never could," McKay muttered from the co-pilot's seat. Louder he said, "I told you the city was cloaked."

"Just never seen a cloak that big." 

McKay snorted and said, "Angle in fifteen degrees here." Jack adjusted his course and within moments the city suddenly sprang into view. The towers were similar to Atlantis, but instead of the snowflake of piers, there was only the central section, a suggestion of the shape of Atlantis in the rise of the land accentuated by crops planted between where the piers were buried. 

"Oh," said Woolsey from the seat behind McKay. "Those fields have come along since the last time I was here." Jack knew the villagers had been farmers, but this seemed to be more industrial that he expected. 

McKay pointed out where the main entry to the city would be, and after taking a turn around the city towers, not at all just for the heck of it, Jack brought the ship down. 

He powered down the little ship, and took a breath he hoped no one noticed. The Air Force was not happy with one perhaps former Colonel John Sheppard, and the SGC wasn't either. Then they had to go and lose Cam Mitchell to this hare-brained Pegasus University thing. Sure, Earth had two ZPMs now and Sam Carter was like a woman in love with all the tech they were sending back, but Atlantis and Meropis each had three ZPMs of their own, and the only limit now was how many empty or depleted cases they could find. It gave Pegasus a distinct advantage, and Jack was concerned that Sheppard going feral was just the tip of the iceberg.

Jack had hated to see that DADT report come across his desk. It wasn't like anyone didn't know there were gay people in the military, and losing valuable people for stupid reasons rankled him. Then the threats from McKay had come through the data burst, putting the entire section of the Pentagon that knew about the SGC into panic mode. Jack had asked for a meeting with the President. The situation had been the last straw, and the executive order rescinding DADT had come not long after, but it might have been too late. In Jack's pocket he had a very official letter on White House stationery, reinstating Sheppard with a promotion to full-bird colonel.

He stood up from the pilot's seat and followed McKay and Woolsey down the ramp. The air of the planet had a touch of sweetness and the temperature was warm, but not too warm for his dress blues. "Nice planet for a college town," he said. McKay glared at him.

Sheppard and the woman Jack assumed was Emmagen walked toward them accompanied by Mitchell in his wheelchair and what could only be described as an honor guard. Sheppard had a beard, more neatly trimmed than his hair ever was, gray streaks on either side of his mouth. Sheppard wore a dark blue uniform of a design he couldn't recognize with yellow piping and some weird butt cape. Emmagen wore a fine blouse in cream and turquoise and a long skirt cut slim, but with slits that were designed for movement, not revealing skin. 

Jack greeted them as formally as he could. "I'm here on behalf of Earth and the IOA for the dedication of Pegasus University."

"Thank you for joining us," Emmagen said. "I believe you know Commander Sheppard and Dr. Mitchell."

"Commander?" Jack said, raising his eyebrows. "Of what?"

Sheppard's eyes darkened in his tanned face, but he did not speak. Emmagen said, "We are developing a defense force for Meropis. The cloak will help us, but because we wish to open the city to many from our galaxy, there is always some risk that someone will want this resource for their own. We do not have the same prejudices as your military," she said in a tone that managed to be both diplomatic and pointed. "As you know, John Sheppard is eminently qualified to lead a defense force."

"And teach math and fluid dynamics," Sheppard said, the laconic voice in contrast to the formality of the uniform. Jack's hopes of bringing Sheppard back into the fold were dwindling. 

He answered Emmagen's first comment. "Well, we're getting better about that," Jack said. "DADT was repealed just last month."

"That's nice," Sheppard said blandly. 

_Nope, that ship has sailed_ , Jack thought, but he handed Sheppard the letter anyway. "You can come back to Atlantis. In fact, if you accept your reinstatement, those would be your orders. Lieutenant Colonel Lorne made it clear from day one that he was just warming the chair."

Sheppard looked over the letter, then folded it and passed it to Cam Mitchell. "I appreciate the sentiment," he said. "We'll take it under advisement."

 _We?_ Jack thought, then he saw the look that passed between Sheppard and Mitchell, and the matching gold rings. So that's how it was. 

"So, do I get the nickel tour?" Jack said. "And will there be cake? The only reason to put up with these shoes is the cake." 

Emmagen looked at him with some confusion, but Woolsey answered. "Of course there will be a reception after the dedication with a variety of foods from all over Pegasus." 

"And a demonstration of a variety of traditions," Emmagen said. Jack had seen his share of traditional dances. He prepared himself for boredom. "It was organized by Commander Sheppard," she continued. "He thought you might appreciate the variety of our martial arts."

Jack perked up at that. 

"But first, you need to meet Machina."

Jack saw a lone figure walking toward them, dressed in dark clothing that matched the honor guard more than Sheppard's fanciful uniform. The face and head were white and blue. 

Jack had read about it, but the robot moved with a mechanical grace, and when he could see its face, he was surprised by how weirdly beautiful it was, shoulders of the uniform blouse open to show articulated joints like muscles. When it spoke, the voice was melodious, a lilt, but founded in the underlying metal of most male voices. "Greetings, General Jonathan O'Neill. If you would come with me," it said. 

"I'll join you," Mitchell said, "in case you have any questions."

Jack wasn't used to being dumped off on a subordinate for these kinds of tours, but he suspected this wouldn't be a typical tour, or that Mitchell was a typical subordinant. They walked to a transporter, which took them to a corridor that could have been anywhere in the city. Mitchell rolled a bit ahead of him and Jack caught a glance of a painting of R2D2 on the chair before Mitchell turned into a room. The robot stood aside and gestured for Jack to go in first.

The room had consoles and a central pedestal. Within seconds a figure appeared, nothing like the Ancient in white robes Jack expected. It was frumpy, in baggy trousers and an old brown cardigan, the face lined. "McKay?" Jack burst out. Yes, he'd read the reports, but seeing it was something else.

"I'm merely a hologram of the great Dr. Rodney McKay." Jack heard Mitchell snort, and if he didn't know better, he have thought the hologram sounded bit ironic.

"Pay no attention to the man behind the curtain?" Jack asked.

"Something like that. I asked to see you before you toured all of Meropis and formed other opinions. I could have simply talked with you through Machina," he gestured at the robot, which was smiling softly at the hologram, "but I thought you'd hear this better from this image. You know Dr. McKay."

"Yep," Jack said, wondering where this was going.

"And you don't like him."

That took Jack by surprise. "Not many people do."

The hologram shrugged. "Greatness is not always appreciated in its own time."

"So why did you want to see me?"

"Because I'm from the future."

"So I read, but it's an alternate future," Jack said. "Someone stepped on a butterfly in this time line."

"Yes, and you haven't met the Ori. Yet."

"Ori?" Jack didn't like the sound of that.

"I may not, through inaction, allow humanity to come to harm. So let me tell you where you're going to find the weapon to defeat them before the Ori even start."

**Author's Note:**

> This fic tags to the SGA episodes The Tower and The Last Man, in case that wasn't clear. 
> 
> The Laws of Robotics, even Machina's Zeroth and Fourth Laws, all go back to Isaac Asimov's robot books, which are good and classics for a reason. Go read them.


End file.
